


Moth

by Madoshi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Diverged after season 6, Friendship is Magic, Insectophobia, M/M, Mind Control, Pining Keith (Voltron), Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Rough Sex, Translation from Russian, Translation into English, Unresolved Sexual Tension, guess why Lance is at the end of the characters' list
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2020-07-11 13:14:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 68,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19928647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoshi/pseuds/Madoshi
Summary: After the fight with Lotor, Lance is forced to return to the center of the blast and subsequently disappears. On route to Earth, paladins have very little luck looking for him. Meanwhile, a small unsignificant planet hidden inside a dust nebula receives telepathic signals full of hurt and longing.Or: the creepiest Love Bug AU you'll ever read.* (* Probably. There are bound to be some fics out there that are even creepier.)





	1. Pictures from memory

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Мотыльки](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18270260) by [Madoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoshi/pseuds/Madoshi). 



> Huge thanks to my amazing wonderful betas crumbcake and Serinah! (If you like Voltron works with good old sci-fi vibes OR well-thougth ABO series, have a look at crumbcake's profile, you won't be disappointed. Serinah is a beautiful heathen who writes hot stony).
> 
> I'm not a native speaker, so all the remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> IMPORTANT NOTE: As I was kindly reminded by those who have read it in Russian, you really need to mind "Body Horror" tag. It's there for a reason. I'll place additional warnings in the relevant chapters.

When the screen blinked to life, it displayed only black, grey, and rainbow stripes that flicked in and out of existence. Keith thought he saw something like that in period movies about TVs and horse carriages.

‘Is that right?’ Warm Touch texted via the paladins’ individual communicators. ‘I have a very limited understanding of how your senses work.’

“Almost,” said Allura with her usual tact. “We have color vision sensitive to the wavelengths from 30 to 1000 tremils.”

“Actually, it’s from 45 to 980 for humans,” Hunk corrected. “And from 27 to 960 for Keith.”

Keith wasn’t surprised Hunk knew that.

“Yes, thank you,” Allura smiled briefly.

‘As you say.’ Warm Touch responded.

The screen displayed blurry coloured spots.

“Now there is a slight problem with resolution,” Coran noted. “Let me just…”

Keith was sure the altean engineer was going to tinker with the set-up, maybe customize a wavelength or two...… After all, it was quite possible Coran had seen the doomgloomer’s tech somewhere in his colourful past. Instead, Coran punched the screen bezel hard with his fist.

Somehow, that did the trick. The device started to behave and the picture cleared up.

They saw pearly grey silk-smooth water clinging to dark landmasses near the eastern horizon, the small islands aglow with the faint pinkish light of dawn. An early morning was pouring into the night somewhere over a warm ocean, with the stars hanging bright and low overhead...

The picture stayed like that for several seconds, then the “camera” dived to the side, the water swashed, and everything went dark.

“This is Earth.” Even as he said it, Keith realized that he closed the distance to the screen, his fists clenched tight. “This is the Earth’s sky!”

“Yes, yes, it is!” Pidge confirmed excitedly. “Somewhere close to the equator.”

“This is the Batabano Gulf,” Hunk added in a choked voice. “That island over there is Juventud, I’ve seen it before. Not great surfing, to be honest, but fishing, on the other hand…”

He trailed off trying to get his breathing under control.

“It looks like we found Lance,” Shiro sounded calm, but Keith could hear the hidden guilt and a coil of anxiety just under the surface. “But how did he manage to send us a message? And why this picture?”

‘The power and clarity of a telepathic signal depend on the emotions. If a sender is young and inexperienced, the fragmented nature of the broadcast is of no surprise, even expected,’ appeared on the screen.

Keith suspected a measure of condescendence in this explanation. Or maybe it just looked that way because while “talking” Warm Touch was leisurely laying on his platform which hovered at the level of Shiro’s shoulder.

“In other words,” Pidge summarized, “he didn’t choose what to send.”

Allura held herself with both arms, tense as a string. “So, if it is a picture of his home planet, if he misses it so desperately…”

‘That’s not the whole content of the delivery,’ Warm Touch wrote. ‘I allowed myself to split the message in two, because there was a notable difference in subjects.’

The new “subject” took the screen.

Keith felt his throat closing tight. Somehow he expected a literal video message this time, something like Earth terrorists would send. Lance, beaten and bloody in front of the camera, unknown dark figures looming above him…

Instead he saw his own face, at three-quarter angle, and a little from above. It looked mulish, even pouty. His eyes flashed yellow for a second and then became violet again.

 _I do not pout!_ Keith immediately thought.

Then an on-screen Keith turned, looked straight at the viewers with a fond, sincere look on his face, smiled fleetingly — and disappeared.

Tense silence followed.

“Wait, I don’t follow,” Pidge said at last. “Did we just see Keith with eyeliner, like a K-pop star?”

“I think his skin kind of sparkled ” Hunk added helpfully.

Keith vigorously shook his head. He’d never used any makeup in his life! Unfortunately, his doppelganger on screen looked embarrassingly big-eyed and porcelain-skinned.

Coran cleared his throat. “It seems that we know who Number four misses the most.”

***

Among themselves, the paladins called this planet Doomgloom. It might be a bit rude to its sentient life forms, but was much easier than citing the number from altean (or galran, for that matter) catalogue every time.

This tiny celestial body orbited a brown dwarf which gave out very little warmth and almost no light. That’s why the planet’s inhabitants who breathed methane instead of oxygen had no idea what you’re supposed to do with this “sight” thing. They were, however, very strong telepaths.

Doomgloomers never fought with each other or anybody else and were not interested in any space expansion type of deals either. But they were very avid listeners.

‘Telepathic waves travel faster than light and envelop the whole of creation,’ explained Warm Touch, one of Doomgloom’s leaders. ‘They are often too weak to decipher. And the more a creature differs from us, the more difficult it is to understand what it thinks. But we are very patient. We are used to unweaving messages from deep space.’

Warm Touch didn’t speak aloud, because Doomgloomers didn’t have a spoken language, although their hearing was pretty good. That fact unnerved Keith. Or maybe it was the Doomgloomers themselves that kept him on edge. They looked like giant caterpillars with no eyes and two rows of pincers for their mouthparts. Keith wasn’t very fond of insects, especially if they were roughly Pidge’s size.

Or maybe it was their telepathy that bothered him? There were guys with pincers among the Blades, and Keith didn’t have any problems with them.

Such fears seemed childish and unbecoming for a newly-minted Black paladin. Keith had hoped he outgrew them. No one else seemed to mind their new allies’ appearance. Except Romelle, who refused to step out of the Blue lion. But that didn’t comfort Keith much.

The wolf stayed with her, the little traitor that he was. His warm presence would be very comforting right now. Keith always felt more confident when Wolf was nearby, especially when he had to play the role of a leader. In fact, Lance used to have the same effect...

Back to the situation at hand. The paladins were standing in a semicircle at the paws of four sitting lions. The bright light from their lamps barely covered the prone form of Red, who looked like a tiny kitten beside Black. It also made visible a small area of dark ground tainted with unpleasant looking white patina, and about twenty locals hovering on their platforms.

It was rather strange negotiations. The paladins were mostly looking at their holoscreens so as to not miss any words. Shiro made an obvious effort to raise his eyes sometimes, but more out of deeply ingrained politeness than necessity.

And, despite the telepathic nature of their hosts, the guests had to speak aloud. The doomgloomers explained that it was extremely hard to read minds of aliens not accustomed to telepathic connections, because they lacked the necessary self-control and the insides of their heads looked messy and unintelligible. It was much easier to read thoughts that were already filtered into words.

“So you have been receiving telepathic messages about galra attacks lately?” asked Pidge. “And you want our protection?”

‘Not exactly, Green paladin,’ the message appeared. It was fascinating how doomgloomers used color designation correctly, despite not understanding the concept. This “green” was just a word for them. ‘We had known about the Galra imperial expansion for a long time. We didn’t act on this knowledge because we also knew that empires are mere short-term fluctuations. We were right.’

Keith’s hand tightened on the handle of his bayard on reflex. Ten thousand years, millions of lives lost, and these caterpillars thought it was a short-term fluctuation!

‘Now the Galra are preoccupied with their inner quarrels,’ Warm Touch continued. ‘They do not expand anymore. It is highly unlikely they would express any interest towards our little world, barren of any resources that are useful to them. But the messages we started to receive recently bother us to no end. They pain us. We would like them to cease. Alas, we cannot reach their source by our own powers.’

“So, what you mean is that someone is hurting and is sending a telepathic mayday?” Shiro asked.

‘We do not think it’s deliberate. The signal is not targeted, but broadcasted. Besides, it seems that it was not intended to be so strong, but had been amplified by accident. However, someone is, indeed, hurting. It is unlikely that the life of this creature is in immediate danger, but its sorrow and distress is a heavy burden to bear. Our people cannot stand it. The overall happiness levels reached a dangerously low mark. Nightmares spread like a plague. The egg production decreased by twenty percent!’ 

Keith looked at Shiro, Hunk, Allura and Pidge. Shiro wore an almost unreadable expression; his patented “I know you’ll make the right choice” face. Hunk shook his head almost imperceptibly. Pidge lowered corners of her mouth a bit. Allura sighed.

Keith was of the same mind.

“Under normal circumstances Voltron would never deny you help,” he began. “But we have very urgent business to attend to. It is a life or death situation. That’s why…”

“That’s why,” Allura interrupted him smoothly, “despite deeply sympathising with your people, we are forced to forward your request to our allies. We will give you instructions on how to contact the Voltron coalition so that they can provide you with the means of space travel…”

‘We understand your urgency and anxiety,’ Keith’s screen displayed. ‘That was why we reached out to Voltron instead of offering payment to the Unilu. We have a reason to believe you will want to take this matter into your own hands. I urge you to watch the recording of the signal we prepared for you. The message was encoded to be compatible with your sensory organs.’

Keith was sure it was a waste of time. Nothing good could come out of this wretched world. It even looked disgusting. White sausages that were caterpillars, bleak sharp-edged rocks tattered with pale papulose spheres of local not-quite mushrooms… What they needed to do was focus on the planets along the possible trajectory of the safety pod. Luckily, for now this trajectory mostly followed the path to Earth, if Pidge’s and Hunk’s calculations were to be believed (and Keith would be hard-pressed to find anything he trusted more than their skills). But Doomgloom was situated away from this track, and they had already wasted more than a week getting here, and were going to waste even more to return. 

And all for this damned signal addressed to Voltron paladins! They hoped that maybe if someone knew that Voltron survived, it could mean Lance ended up there.

This hope proved to be short-lived.

Now they were asked to spend even more time here...

Keith breathed in and out, trying to calm down. Another half varga wouldn’t change much. They could afford to at least see this recording.

Wherever Lance might be, he survived there for three decaphoebs — and he was alive, Red didn’t let anyone pilot him, even Keith, even as a temporary replacement! He would have to survive for just a little longer. Lance was a fighter, he could do that.

***

After they saw the recording, the question of whether or not to help the Doomgloomers became moot. 

***

Lance came to very slowly.

He saw columns of murky light and lurking shadows. He thought he might be in the healing pod, and that he would see Shiro, Pidge, Hunk and Allura smiling at him from behind the glass any moment now. 

Wait a minute, no, Shiro turned out to be a clone. Keith is the new Black paladin once more, and they have no idea where the real Shiro is. He tried to contact Lance on the astral plane, but Lance had failed him. Again.

So, there was that fight with Lotor, and the holes in the fabric of reality, and they opted to blow up the Castleship to mend the time-space continuum, but at the last moment something went wrong, and Lance volunteered to return to the ship, to push that button on the hull… you know, the one Pidge repaired that time they had a snowball fight with Olkari spores. Because Red is the fastest lion, so it made sense, right?

That’s why he and Red went and… did they get there in time? Yes, they did, they were flying back to the others when the blast occurred, which was followed by the awful sound of metal tearing apart and then this automatic ejection thingy, that Hunk and Pidge equipped all the lions with after Shiro’s disappearance, worked and...

The safety pod was programmed to fly away. Where? Where was Lance now?

He blinked several times, trying to clear his eyes. It took a lot of effort. Everything seemed doubled, even tripled. Lance thought he was looking up through two layers of holes… no, that sounded wrong, didn’t it?

At last he gathered that the pod was laying on its side and Lance was looking up through a hole in its hull. There, above the pod, the thick green canopy of leaves was pierced through and dim white light was shining right upon Lance. 

“The tunnel and the light,” Lance murmured. “No way, I didn’t order that.”

Something was crawling down his face. He lifted his hand — which was very difficult because apparently the gravitation here was incredibly strong and his hand now weighed a ton — and brushed the thing off. Then he tried to look at what was now in his palm.

Eyes were very hard to re-focus, but he managed. His glove was painted red and there was something small, broken, and grey-winged stuck in the blood.

It was also dead, not moving. But the crawling sensation on his hand persisted.

It took Lance ages to figure out he needed to turn his hand around. Apparently, the gravitation was affecting his head too. As soon as he tried to move it, he felt as if someone was hammering inside his skull.

There, at last! He saw two more moth-like grey-winged creatures crawling on the back of his hand. And when Lance looked sideways, he saw that much more of them were already sitting on the ruins of the pod’s control panel and on his own breastplate. Which was ruined too.

OK, insects were fine, he could work with insects. Now he had to get out. He wished he could have some water first, though. He was parched.

Lance felt as if there was not enough oxygen. His face was hot, the air stuffy. The faceplate was apparently broken too, the climate control non-functioning. But despite the sweltering heat he was shivering. Funny, that.

A thought came, indistinct, as if through several layers of cotton: _I must have crashed in the jungle._ Fuck. _Any teeny-tiny wound would now take forever to heal. And I bet I have more than one teeny-tiny wound..._

Lance felt as if he was being enveloped by the dark, his field of vision growing narrower and narrower. It terrified the vulnerable teen inside; that funny guy from Cuba, the lover boy and the best of Voltron paladins. “It’s OK,” he said to the scared kid. “It’s all going to be OK, you’ve been so tired lately. You need to rest. Then we will wake up and we’ll start getting out of here.”

But he wouldn’t wake up, and he wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t.


	2. The feeling of the sea

“I don’t like it,” Keith said.

“Me neither,” Shiro sounded as if he was torn between wanting to comfort Keith and simply agreeing with him. “But their suggestion makes sense. We really could use a telepath.”

“We can find Lance without them.” As if giving more weight to Keith’s words, his wolf who was sitting at his feet, growled as if saying, 'stop arguing, you know he's right'. Strange, usually Wolf adored Shiro and only woofed happily at whatever he said. Keith must be more pissed than he realized, since the beast from the endless void felt it.

No, it wouldn’t do. He needed to stop getting so worked up. Patience yields focus and all that jazz.

“This situation is of grave concern for them”, Allura agreed with Shiro. “They have a real demographic disaster on their hands… rhetorically speaking.”

Yes, Doomglomers had no hands. They were less ‘human’ than the most alien of aliens Keith had seen — the Taujeerans, who at least had visual sensors. Was it even possible to work with them, especially when Lance’s life was at stake?

“It is of no surprise they want to take part in the rescue mission,” Allura continued. For a second she grimaced in a way Keith had never before seen from her. “To tell you the truth, I’d be glad if other members of the Coalition were as willing to pull their weight.”

But Doomglomers didn’t just offer help, they actually helped — which was, indeed, more than could be said about some of the allies. For one thing, they managed to encode their coordinates into Altean ones and pinpoint with great precision where the source of telepathic signals should be. It saved the paladins a lot of time and for that Keith was grateful.

They also graciously offered the passengers of the lions, Kaltenecker included, to wait for the paladins return on Doomgloom. When Allura refused on everybody’s behalf, equally graciously, the Doomgloomers offered the paladins their old orbital station.

“It is only equipped with thrusters,” Warm Touch explained, “but if you are willing to tow it, it can serve as a temporary base of operations. Your Red lion would fit into the shuttle’s hangar, and you’ll have space for physical exercises. Your vertebrae in particular need them.” 

Keith and Allura accepted the offer, and not because of the Red lion — Black seemed perfectly fine to carry him, he tended to get anxious every time he was forced to let Red’s inanimate body out of his maw. It was mostly that everybody was starting to get fed up with a fine view ofto the inner walls of Lions’ cockpits and storage rooms. “A space for physical exercises” sounded heavenly.

They also accepted another offer which was more of a demand, albeit a very polite one: an emissary of the Doomglomers should come with them.

This was the part of the arrangement Keith hated. Too often the paladins came across ‘well-meaning’ aliens that turned out to be Galra agents, so taking a stranger into his area of responsibility didn’t sit well with Keith. 

“We need to remember,” Allura advised, “that we are at the very edge of Zarkon’s Empire. May-Oks-7892, or Doomglom, as you prefer to call it, is located inside a dust nebula. Warm Touch is right, the Galra has no interest in it. That’s why the chance of a doublecross is negligible.”

Despite an attempt to back the caterpillars’ argument, the princess sounded aloof. To be fair, that was normal now. She grew distant after the battle with Lotor and Lance’s disappearance, except for rare moments she had with Coran, Pidge or the mice. Or maybe it started even earlier, during those months that Keith wasn’t in the Castle, he wasn’t sure.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shiro put his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “If worst comes to worst, we can take one doomgloomer.”

“Unless they can telepathically control us,” Hunk added. “Just saying.”

“Black now knows the signs of mind control,” Shiro shook his head. “He’ll warn us.”

“Huh, that’s a relief. You know, since not everyone else has a convenient prosthetic that can be whipped off to stop zombie mode. No offence.” 

“None taken. You’re all missing out.”

Hunk chuckled.

“I don’t think they can control our minds,” said Pidge. “I’m no xenobiologist, and even if I were, nobody would let me vivisect a doomgloomer, but there is also the fact that Green always complains about our minds being difficult to understand. She can only manage to give me pointers during battle, when I’m focused on one task and the noise level is down. So I think the Doomgloomers told us the truth.”

“Speaking of control,” Allura interrupted a possible beginning of a lecture. “Please, make every effort to control your emotions around our guest. Let’s try to find a middle ground with them. We need to work together to save Lance.”

The words were right on time, because the door to the inner airlock chamber of the orbital station opened, and a hovering platform encased in the pinkish glowing sphere of a force field entered. The platform was carrying a fat white caterpillar looking almost exactly like Warm Touch, maybe a little smaller.

“My greetings to the esteemed paladins and their allies,” the bright letters scrolled across the pinkish sphere in two strings, the upper one in English and the lower one in Altean. “My name is Sea, I’ll be assisting you in your mission. Allow me to thank you in advance on behalf of my people. I’m looking forward to working together. Were you able to recalibrate the inner environment of the orbital station according to your needs? Were the coordinates that we sent coherent?”

“Yes, thank you,” Allura took a step forward. “Let’s go to the bridge to compare our data. We will need whatever information you have collected about the source of the signal. After that we can depart.”

“Wait a second, I have a question!” Hunk raised his hand. “Why ‘sea’? I can understand ‘warm touch’, but there are no seas on Doom… on your planet.”

“I picked one of the images considered beautiful in your conceptual framework,” displayed the sphere. “A closer approximation would be ‘a feeling of the sea’, or possibly, ‘a sensation of the sea’. But you all have names no more than three syllables in length, so I decided on the shorter option. According to the telepathic message we deciphered, ‘sea’ is an adequate equivalent of my real name. A word for word translation is challenging, since you are not equipped with the necessary sensory organs to experience what my name refers to. Is my answer satisfactory, Yellow Paladin?”

“Yes, very,” Hunk nodded. “It’s cool you’re so diplomatic, it’s usually all on me.”

“I would also suggest you think of me as a young woman only a few years older than you,” Sea added. “That would facilitate the growing empathy between us.”

“Feeling of the sea” came from Lance’s memory, suddenly Keith realized. That was what she meant.

***

The dream was probably based on the picture they were shown in the morning — smooth water under starry sky, an outline of an unknown island near Cuban shore. Keith saw himself on the aft of a boat floating between the sea and the sky in the pre-dawn twilight. Sitting on the stern of the boat, facing Keith, his back to wherever they were going, was Lance. Droplets of water were glistening on his naked shoulders and chest, he was grinning widely.

Lance was rowing with a carefree look on his face, not bothering to check where he was steering them. A stupid move, since the boat was heading into the open sea, towards the unfamiliar darkness clouding the distant horizon and quickly drowning the stars. Deep inside the dark cloud Keith could see molten-white and violet flashes of galran ion cannons.

Keith wanted to tell Lance to turn back to shore, but his broad shoulders and muscled arms were moving so effortlessly, and his smile was so wonderful, that Keith’s tongue froze in his mouth, and he felt a very inappropriate, but oh so sweet excitement in the pit of his stomach.

Keith woke up and looked at the grey ceiling of the storage room in the Black lion, faintly lit by green strips of auxiliary lamps. Wolf stirred at his side and softly rumbled, half-asleep. Keith buried his fingers in the very thick and soft, almost weightless fur. 

The familiar smell of a dog and tangy pollen of alien flowers calmed him, but the arousal wasn’t going anywhere. Keith felt sick with himself.

If it was three or maybe even two years ago, Keith would’ve cried. He had cried when Shiro disappeared on Kerberos, biting an edge of his pillow so that his roommate wouldn’t hear.

Of course, now Keith wasn’t biting anything. He turned on his side, nosed into the warmth of Wolf’s scruff, and one by one, slowly relaxed every muscle in his body. Luckily, Wolf didn’t wake up, just sighed softly and rolled closer to Keith. Breathing became a bit harder, as if through a gauze face mask, but there was no risk of suffocating. He felt sleepy. That was good.

He needed to rest, or he wouldn’t be in good shape to save Lance.

***

Keith didn’t like the planet. Or, rather, he didn’t like the swamp that covered most of it.

He prefered deserts where you could see for miles, where rocks were painted with the stripes of air and water erosion, where the night air was so cold and clear that, if you raised your hand, stars seemed to dance at your fingertips. This place was the complete opposite. It was always enveloped in a thick impenetrable blanket of clouds. During the day the sky looked evenly white, and during the night you probably couldn’t see anything at all.

The planet lucked out when it formed far away from its parent star. That was the only reason its powerful greenhouse effect didn’t turn it into a death sauna like Venus, unsuitable for any protein based life.

As Pidge said, it didn’t look like the weather on the planet changed often. The climate seemed incredibly stable. Not quite hell, but a perpetually sweltering and steaming limbo made worse by the constant pour of fine rain.

They hadn’t landed yet, but the data collected by the lions’ scanners and Pidge’s drones were enough to give them a first impression. The holoscreens on the hurriedly modified bridge of Doomgloom’s orbital stations showed the same conditions all around the planet. The pictures displayed thick vegetation and coiled tree roots growing into the wet mud. The bark of those trees was covered with thin and short white tentacles, almost like hairs — possibly air roots, possibly some symbiotic animals.

There were several mountain ranges on the planet, but they were rare. Along the borders of some of them they saw long barren strips of land.

“That must be the work of the planet’s sentient race,” said Pidge. “Or semi-sentient. I can’t see any ordered structures except that bald areas near mountains. They are not building any skyscrapers any time soon.”

“You think these stripes are artificial?” Hunk asked.

“Maybe. Look at this video. It was taken near the edge of a clearing.”

On the main screen a creature appeared, fussing with something on the muddy ground. It was about the size of a terrier, according to the drones’ data, and strongly resembled an Earthian pterodactyl, except its wings ended not in curved talons but in jointed appendages akin to fingers. The angle of the camera changed, and it became clear that with these fingers the creature was rifling through a bunch of small objects, one of which looked like a hammer, another one like a lancet. While Keith was wondering why someone would need a wooden lancet, the creature hid its treasures inside a hole in a thick tree with grey bark and covered the hole with moss.

“Well, maybe I spoke too soon. Looks primitive. Maybe that’s a form of instinctive behaviour,” mused Pidge. “These things might not be tools but… I don’t know… parts of a mating ritual.” 

After working with the Olkari Pidge had started to treat nature with much more enthusiasm than before.

“He looks clever to me,” said Romelle. “I like him.”

The pterodactyl on screen raised its long snout and must have screamed; it was silent, because this drone didn’t record sound. Then the alien stepped back, still screaming. It looked scared.

As if attracted by the noise, a swarm of critters burst against the screen. They were very small and grey, almost indistinguishable due to the low resolution. The pterodactyl tried to take off, and Keith was sure it was going to make it: the surge of grey dots that descended upon it just couldn’t possibly be heavy enough to seriously impair its ability to fly. But the creature’s wings flapped with visible effort once, twice — and then the alien fell to the ground. It crawled, grasping a long root with its not-fingers, but it was agony, not a calculated move; then it stilled. The grey swarm left the body almost instantly; it looked whole, undamaged. They didn’t eat anything. Maybe they put their eggs inside the creature?

“Are those killer bugs? I don't like killer bugs. Why did it have to be killer bugs?” said Hunk anxiously. “This planet is definitely going on my ‘Worst Places to Live’ list!”

“Could be plant spores,” said Pidge. “Or small mammals. Anything, really.”

“I doubt they could eat through your armor,” Coran twirled his moustache. “I hope you do not plan on taking it off?”

“Yes, but do you remember how we never found any trace of Lance's armor signature?” Hunk exclaimed. “It must have been damaged very badly, so much so that the transmitter broke. That means Lance has been here unprotected for… two months already. Or three years and two months, depending on when he was thrown through time and space.”

Nobody wanted to respond to that. After a pregnant pause Allura asked,. “Sea, can you try to find our friend with your telepathic skills?”

The text appeared on Sea’s sphere. “I’ll do what I can. However, the emittance is incredibly strong. Think of it as being near a landslide. The ground is trembling, everything is too loud to make out any individual noise.”

Keith tried not to imagine Lance being swarmed by grey dots. But he still saw it clear as day: a slim tanned hand reaching out from the cloud of strange insects — for they were insects in his mind’s eye, incredibly disgusting at that, something like flying cockroaches; the hand grasps a liana or a root, makes a desperate effort to pull...

 _No, don’t think like that. If Lance has survived here for so long, then he will be OK for a little longer._ Keith was on time after the fight with the Shiro clone, he will make it this time too.

‘I’m reverting the shield,” texted Sea.

“If the Doomgloomers have shielding technology,” asked Romelle loudly, “why can’t they cover the whole planet with it? Then they wouldn’t need us to stop the signal.”

“In ninety percent of cases the answer to such questions is ‘too expensive’ or ‘takes too much time’”, Coran said. “The other nine percent would be ‘oh! we didn’t think of that’, with the last one being ‘the green Riturian worm didn’t let us do it’. A very annoying creature, that one!”

Meanwhile, the protection sphere around Sea flickered, its pink shade faded, making it transparent, only visible as a faint glimmer in the air.

Sea’s bloated white body jerked on her platform, as if hit by weak electric current. Two strings of numbers rolled along the invisible force field.

“Entering the coordinates…” Pidge murmured. “Quiznack, that’s a huge area! Sea, can you narrow it down?”

Apparently, Sea couldn’t. She jerked several more times, then went limp and motionless. The sphere became pink again and displayed the words, ‘This message is automatic. The passenger’s life is in danger!’

Hunk, Keith and Coran nearly ran into each other as they all bolted towards the platform. 

“We need to get her into the healing pod!” Hunk shouted.

They did have one which they used for transporting Shiro when he was still unconscious. Unfortunately, it was almost out of energy.

“She breathes methane, how do we transfer her?” Keith barked.

“Pods have transitioning airlocks. Come, help me set it up,” Coran pushed the force field sphere to the door with an air of confidence. “Number three, stay here, Number two will be enough.”

Keith stood still, clenching his fists. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, whether to go to the med bay where he could pretend to be useful, or stay here, on the bridge, not letting this suspicious planet out of his sight.

Wolf, who had been sleeping curled up as a big furry ball under the control panel, felt his friend’s tension, raised his head and looked at Keith inquiringly, then at Hunk and Coran, who were pushing the platform into the elevator. He stood up and went with them as if saying, don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on things.

Keith had to smile.

Quiznack, if not for Wolf, he wouldn’t know how to even handle leading Voltron, especially now. They used to have the Castleship with its resources. The Coalition used to stand by them.

And he was used to counting on Lance.

Was it a curse that every time Keith sat his ass into Black, he had to lose someone dear to him?

Keith wanted nothing more than to fly down there and show the locals what they backed themselves into when they decided to take one of the paladins of Voltron hostage. But he knew that acting rashly was a stupid idea. They didn’t know what the situation was at all. If there really was a risk of a telepathic attack, they couldn’t go in blind. If he crashed like the damned caterpillar, he would be of no use to Lance.

“There was a significant quintessence spike,” Allura said into the tense silence. “When Sea tried to scan the planet, it… responded.”

“Did the response come from the coordinates she showed us?” asked Pidge urgently.

“From everywhere,” Allura sounded stunned; like she didn’t believe her own words. 

“Well,” said Keith. “Then it looks like we are going to fight the whole planet.”


	3. What the quiznack, Lance?!

Sea regained consciousness relatively quickly.

‘It wasn’t an attack,’ she wrote when Keith and Shiro peppered her with anxious questions. ‘That was a… greeting. I’m sorry, I can’t be of more use to you now. I’m exhausted.’

“Is contact with local life forms dangerous?” asked Shiro.

‘I don’t think so. Your sensitivity level is very low. They would need a physical mediator to affect you. Don’t eat or drink anything on the surface. Breathing their air might not be advisable either.’

“We weren’t going to take off our helmets,” said Keith tersely. “The local fauna is very aggressive.” 

‘Good decision.’

After this message Sea stopped ‘talking’ and curled up into a ball on her platform.

Keith was sure that Lance did not have his helmet. And somehow he was transmitting so strongly that the Doomgloomers received his brainwaves across half a galaxy. There couldn't be such a strong telepath among regular humans, could there? So, how did he manage it?

_Please, let him be alright. Let him have a weird genetic talent that was awakened by stress. Just let him be half-altean or any other kind of half-alien. Please._

***

“I’d rather you not take the lions,” said Shiro immediately. “We don’t know what we are dealing with. If there is a risk of mind control, we’d better take precaution. Landing will be challenging. The area that Sea showed us is in the middle of the dense rainforest.”

“Green can land there, no problem,” said Pidge. “She’ll just ask trees to move aside.”

“Yeah, I’d feel safer if we took at least one lion,” Hunk agreed. “Yellow says it’s gonna be difficult for him down there with all the wet mud, but he had the best armor and he’s ready to risk it.”

“Blue is going,” Allura's commanding tone made you want to obey her orders. “She can land in the water and she doesn’t mind the mud,” she sounded surprised about the mud. “And she is very worried about Lance.”

“Very well,” Keith tried not to show how much he was of the same mind with Blue. “Blue is our best spy, and she has the most impressive attacks after Red. If the locals are holding Lance hostage, a show of force could go a long way.”

Keith was half expecting Shiro to argue, reprimanding him for his quick temper and aggression. But Shiro kept silent, even nodded almost imperceptibly. 

Keith turned to Pidge. “Besides Blue only Green can land on jungle terrain. And her special abilities are tied to the forest. So I need you on the low geostationary orbit above our landing point. If things go south, you can activate your cloaking and provide cover.”

Pidge nodded.

“Shiro, you need to stay on the base, you’ll be our reconnaissance support along with Coran.” Keith felt very uncomfortable saying that. He steeled himself for the hurt he was sure to see on Shiro’s face. Even without his Galra arm, Shiro was an excellent fighter. But Keith just couldn’t let his brother-in-arms participate in active combat while he was still recovering from… everything. Besides, you can fight with one hand, but you can’t climb a tree or tug your stuck teammate out of the bog.

Shiro didn’t look offended, he simply closed his eyes for a second, the wrinkle on his brow growing prominent. Keith hated that wrinkle. Shiro already looked older than he was, especially now, with all that grey hair.

“I agree,” said the ex Black Paladin, softly. “I also recommend taking Romelle with you. She was an excellent help during the fight with the pirates, her sheer physical strength will be an asset.”

“I’ll be glad to help,” Romelle confirmed politely, but glanced at the screens showing the muddy planet in utter disgust.

Keith agreed wholeheartedly.

***

The musty brown puddle of a river barely peeked through the thick canopy of trees, but it was enough for Allura to aim Blue there.

“Here is our landing site,” she murmured.

“I know Blue won’t drown, but we might.” Keith leaned towards Blue’s screens, holding the back of the pilot’s chair.

Allura pressed something on the control panel, and lowering her head, Blue roared with her maw opened wide. There was no sound inside the cockpit, but outside, the leaves on the trees trembled.

“It’s not deep,” said Allura. “Besides, the gravity here is slightly lower than the Altean standard. Blue wants to stretch her legs.”

Allura probably wanted to stretch her legs too. Keith saw a spark in her eyes when Blue hit the water, sliding along the brown surface on all fours as a child would slide on a stretch of ice, with grace, unexpected from such a giant creature.

This marshy river really was not that deep for Blue: the water was at the level of her knee joints. It was still more than the average human’s height.

Blue plodded upstream while Allura looked for a good landing spot on the shores.

“Huh, it’s pretty hot out there,” said Hunk, looking at Allura’s control panel.

“Ancient Alteans were incredibly advanced!” said Romelle, who was wearing Allura’s spare space suit. “I don’t feel any heat at all!”

 _Lance has to tough it out with no armor._ Keith didn’t voice his concern, but he knew Hunk and Allura were thinking the same.

The river banks were covered with solid looking walls of thickly coiled roots. Where the roots met the water, the white hairs on them wiggled like worms. Keith really hoped they were plants, not animals, but decided against asking Pidge. He didn’t want her distracted.

At last they saw a clearing on the left shore: a small hill, covered with short pale vegetation.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Hunk. “What if there is a monster waiting in ambush?”

“There are no large animals around,” said Allura. “And the ground is solid enough, if my sonar is to be believed.”

Blue extended her neck above the bank and opened her mouth providing an exit for her passengers.

Keith headed out first, but Wolf pulled ahead of him as he did sometimes. He had barely jumped down from Blue’s jaw, when a grey-white tornado swirled up around him.

“Hey!” Hunk shouted. Keith didn’t shout, just grabbed his bayard and leapt into the pale whirlwind. The quiznacked thing looked the same as the swarm on holoscreens! Exactly the same!

He found Wolf almost immediately: the beast was sitting with his head up, blinking. The whirlwind was spiraling around them; hundreds and hundreds of small critters, a cross between moths and butterflies, with short grey wings. None of them bothered with Wolf who seemed surprised but not frightened. He watched the swarm with the same mild caution and curiosity he would watch a river full of rapids as it rose quickly after a storm.

Keith breathed out, but didn’t let his guard down. “It’s OK, it’s just butterflies!” he shouted for the sake of his teammates. “They seem to be keeping their distance!”

It was true: no moth smashed itself on the visor of his helmet so far.

“Are you sure they’re just butterflies?” Hunk asked with a touch of hysteria. “That’s a helluva lot! Maybe they’re the killer bugs in disguise? Are you sure you are not currently being mauled by killer bugs?”

“What are butterflies?” Romelle seconded. “Do they have fangs?”

After several tense moments, the grey whirlwind rose high over the paladins’ heads. The insects formed a thick circular cloud which made a turn in the air above the river bed and flew into the forest.

“Huh, the killer bugs must have a taste only for dragons,” Hunk said, relieved. “They are not interested in us.”

“Well, I’m glad at least something is not interested in us,” grumbled Romelle. “I was starting to think that everything out there is out to get us!”

“OK, enough chit chat,” Keith said, deciding against informing Hunk that even if these moths didn’t mind humans, he, for one, really did mind potentially territorial and poisonous species. “Time to go.”

“Maybe we are better off waiting here until Lance finds us himself?” Hunk reasoned. “I’m sure he saw Blue landing. Even if these bugs are harmless, who knows what else lives in this jungle! If Lance has survived here on his own, he really knows everything much better than we do.”

The jungle was silent.

Keith turned on his heel and started going down the hill, Wolf at his side. The beast wasn’t keen on walking ahead of him now. Allura and Romelle followed.

“Or we can go, I guess,” Hunk sighed, coming along.

“If Lance had enough mental presence to seek us out, then Red would have picked him up already,” Allura voiced Keith’s thoughts much more softly than he would care to do himself; he knew that Hunk’s suggestion was logical, but couldn’t help his frustration. “Or Blue would have felt him. But something is bothering her. She insists Lance is in many places at once.”

“I hope that whatever is disturbing her won’t try to disturb us,” Romelle sighed.

“Oh, we’re so gonna be disturbed,” said Hunk evenly.

They had been walking for less than half a varga, but it seemed like forever. Fortunately, they didn’t need to cut through undergrowth, as nothing short and fragile could grow in the thick layer of wet decomposing leaves except giant columns of old trees. Here and there shafts of murky white light fell through the holes in the canopy; on the whole the impression was of ruins deep underwater.

Swamp muck squelched underneath, neartly trapping their feet, from time to time the rain dripped from the leaves above. Even in the paladin’s armour with its climate-control system and servo motors the walk was not pleasant — for one thing, humidity made their visors foggy and they had to constantly wipe it off .

Keith could only imagine how bad it would be without that protection.

At some point he had to take out his bayard to cut through a thick liana — and stopped, feeling as if someone was watching him. He thought he saw something — a fluttering movement among leaves, a shadowy figure...

“Everybody, duck!” he barked. He must have overdone it, because the others hit the ground before he was done yelling. Allura had the nerve to put her shield above her head. Her timing was perfect, because the shield was instantly hit by a bright laser beam.

Hunk and Keith reacted without thought. Hunk jumped up, Keith crouched low, and they both turned their backs to Allura and Romelle with their shields ready to cover them. If somebody opened heavy fire, the shields would give them about forty ticks. That’s enough for Pidge to come rescue them in Green.

But there were no more shots. From the branches overhead a dark figure flew down grasping a liana and kicked Allura’s shields with both feet.

The kick was so strong and unexpected that Keith and Hunk couldn’t brace themselves when Allura's shield slammed into theirs on impact and fell down. Keith sprang back up, ignoring the sharp pain in his shoulder. He heard Wolf whimpering and from a corner of his eye saw him rolling in the mud and trying to clean his nose with front paws, like a dog who had been pepper-sprayed.

There was nobody near Wolf, so Keith couldn’t spare the time helping him now. Keith rushed towards Allura, whose shield was gone. She was blocking a long broadsword with her hands crossed in front of her. Her silhouette was glowing with familiar pink light.

Keith had never seen this particular sword, but he heard about it many times and he would recognize the red bayard in any form. They must have taken it away from Lance.

He realized his mistake an instant later.

“Lance!” he shouted. “What the quiznack are you doing?!”

Lance glowered at Keith, his brow furrowed in concentration.

His helmet was missing, his armour filthy and partly shattered. The scariest part was the large indent in the center of his chestplate and all the cracks going from it. But Lance’s face was clean, even shaved. Not a trace of that scraggly stubble which appeared when they had to rough it for a couple of days with little to no time for personal hygiene.

And his hair was… was it grey? No, it just had some forest debris tangled in it.

Everything else was almost the same as Keith remembered. Except Lance might have had another growth spurt, and was now again an inch or two higher than Keith.

“Hey, samurai,” said Lance very casually, as if they saw each other this morning and not several months ago. “Wait a sec, I have things to do.”

A sword in his hand suddenly disappeared, and Lance jumped sideways — a trick Shiro tried to teach him many times in the training room. He then turned his back to the paladins and ran deeper into the forest.

“Lance, wait!” cried Allura; Keith had never heard so much sheer hurt in her voice.

“Bro!” that one was Hunk.

Only Romelle reacted appropriately: she followed Keith when he chased after Lance.

This time, Keith didn’t pay any attention to the squelching mud or that the forest was growing denser and denser. Lance was almost within his reach, a little bit more and he’d be able to tackle him...

Small winged bugs swarmed Keith, too fast to see where they came from. This time they didn’t keep their distance. On the contrary, they hit him like a tidal wave. Dozens of them were immediately crushed against his vizor, leaving disgusting yellow spots. Keith tried to clear them away with his hand, but the moths were like a flood, and soon he couldn’t even see his own fingers.

“Fuck!” Romelle’s shout rang through his earpiece.

“Woah, who taught her the F-word?” Hunk asked, as if that mattered given the circumstances.

“I did,” said Pidge grumpily. “She needs to know at least one swear word since she keeps using quiznack wrong. What is happening on your end, guys? These moth thingies are flying above the forest across all the designated area!”

“I wish I knew,” said Keith.


	4. Dragon Fight

A good leader doesn’t rush into the unknown. A good leader doesn’t risk his team to save just one man.

Even though Voltron was based on a different philosophy than the Blades, there was a difference between leaving a comrade behind and not going in blind when said comrade looked healthy and sprite.

If not for Wolf, Keith would not have returned to the base without Lance.

Wolf was sick. Not like when he’d been injured during the battle with the pirates, or at least, Keith couldn’t find any wounds on his hide. He wasn’t curled up on the ground either, but kept very close to Keith, trembling and sometimes growling at the other paladins with his tail between his legs. This wasn’t like Wolf at all. He was many things but a coward wasn’t one of them. He reacted to danger in the same way Keith did: he tackled it head-on. Well, he could also hide if the threat was too dangerous and his survival instincts kicked in, that was something Keith could understand too.

But this… cowering and whimpering routine was unlike him.

That scared Keith quite a bit.

He almost wished Wolf had been bitten and poisoned after all — like that ‘dragon’ they’d seen on screen. Their healing pod would take care of that kind of injury. Even though up to now, Wolf tended to heal by himself without any problems, much like the marvelously impossible creature with almost magical abilities that he was.

“I think he is scared of something on the surface,” Hunk said what everybody was thinking after scanning Wolf when they returned to the base.

The medical scanner showed no abnormalities. And Wolf clearly calmed down after leaving the jungle behind. From time to time he bared his fangs when looking at rainy pictures of the swamp planet still on holoscreens, but otherwise seemed fine. 

Keith would gladly bare his fangs too, if he could have afforded to look so feral. All the members of the rescue party had undergone vacuum cleansing, but he felt as if the stench of wet mud and decay had somehow seeped through the quarantine filters.

“Scared by what?” asked Shiro.

“By whatever the hell is sending telepathic signals,” said Hunk. “It must be controlling Lance, too. The same way Haggar was controlling Shiro… I’m sorry, clone Shiro, through his hand.”

Keith was mollified by Hunk’s words. That made sense. Lance was clearly not in control of his actions. It must be another one of Haggar’s tricks. Maybe Lance was kidnapped by her, then managed to escape and somehow ended up here… Or Hunk is right, and there are very strong telepaths on this planet who enslaved him.

If that is the case, then it will be OK. Allura already knows how to deal with it, the main thing is to catch Lance. And they will capture him, because Hunk was right after all: Lance found them himself and he would do so again.

That was what Keith meant to say when he opened his mouth. But what came out was, “It doesn’t look like Lance is under mind control.”

Deep in his heart of hearts Keith knew that he preferred Hunk’s interpretation because it was the nicer one (huh, it said something about his life that mind control was actually the most harmless option), and it was the most solvable. But the more pessimistic part of Keith was sure that whatever was wrong with Lance wasn’t a repeat of Shiro’s situation.

He didn’t want to think about it, but if not for Keith, then who would? He is the Black Paladin now, Voltron’s leader. Even if Allura still has final say when it comes to the interstellar politics, and Shiro works as an adviser.

What if Lance is furious with them and ready to kill for real — on his own volition, without the influence of the mysterious alien evil overlords? What if he had gone crazy from loneliness while stranded on this nightmarish planet, and his feelings towards Allura turned upside down, and that’s why he targeted her first?

“Dude,” Hunk crossed his arms. “I know you and Lance were not on the best of terms…”

“We were on good terms!” Keith blurted, but stopped himself. “Sorry. Please, go on.”

“So, as I was saying,” Hunk grimaced. “I know Lance probably better than all of you. He would never ever get so crazy that he would try to kill Allura or me. He would never try to hurt you, Keith! Intentionally, I mean.”

“This is something that is very hard for me to say,” Allura bit her lip. “But I’m afraid that during the Lotor situation we were not very kind to Lance. If he lived for three years on this planet, surviving unimaginable perils… could that have warped what he thought of us? ”

Keith felt sick. So it was not just his stupid paranoid thoughts after all.

“That’s why it has to be mind control!” Hunk replied stubbornly. “He wouldn’t lose it in just three years, it would take much longer than that! And… and he looked okayish to me. No beard, no anything… when people go crazy from solitude, they usually go full ape! And what do you mean we were not very kind? Everything was normal!”

Allura averted her eyes.

“Well, if you think about it…” Pidge began pensively, raising her head from her computer. “Do you remember how we were teasing him? When he seemed to seriously be…” She trailed off, looking at Allura hesitantly.

Keith could sense some kind of drama there, which they had failed to inform him about, be it for the lack of time or intention.

“We were always teasing him!” Hunk furiously shook his head. “And he teased us right back, don’t you remember?! It’s just how we roll! No, Lance loves us, he wouldn’t ambush us like that!”

“I looked him in the eye,” Keith said darkly. “He looked just fine. He even greeted me.”

“Hey, samurai,” Pidge mimicked in an uncanny monotone. “Wait a sec, I have things to do.”

“The part about things to do is what bothers me, really,” said Coran, twirling his moustache. “What could he possibly need to get done?”

“I thought he meant fighting with me?” Allura suggested hesitantly.

“If that were the case Number Four… or is he Number Three again now?” Coran seemed to seriously contemplate this for a moment. “Nevermind! If that were the case, Lance would continue fighting with you. But he ran into the forest.”

“I’m with Keith on this, my main concern is Wolf,” said Shiro. “What happened to him? Was he hit telepathically? Was it the same thing that influenced Lance? Sea, can you tell us anything about it?”

Keith almost jumped: somehow he forgot the caterpillar was still here and heard every word, despite her shield constantly making a soft low hum. Apparently, it was true that the constant low-level noise was much easier to get used to than silence. 

His forgetfulness also meant that Keith stopped perceiving her as a threat. That was just as disturbing. Who knows, maybe she mind-whammied him somehow?

‘Telepathic intermission doesn’t leave traces,’ her words appeared on the sphere. ‘But I think White is right. Your semi-sentient companion is, without a doubt, rather sensitive, that’s why he so easily understands wishes and actions of his human companion, the Black Paladin. This planet has a very high level of background telepathic noise. If it didn’t bother your companion prior to landing and later, before meeting with your lost friend, it’s safe to assume he was dealing with a targeted blow. But I can’t be absolutely sure.’

“Shiro,” corrected the man. “My name is Shiro, not White.”

‘My apologies. I’ll edit my mental mapping.’

“That’s what I was saying!” Hunk insisted. “Lance is under the influence of something! Plus, he hurt Wolf! He would never do that if he was in his right mind, he adores dogs!”

“Wolf is not a dog,” corrected Keith, tired of this particular argument.

“Well, Lance doesn’t know that!”

“He doesn’t look like a dog.”

“Well, he is too cute and colourful for a wolf.”

“What do you mean colourful?!”

“Hold on, hold on!” said Romelle who was perched on the box of food supplies by the wall and hadn’t contributed to the discussion so far. “Why are you so stuck on the idea that he tried to kill you?”

Everybody turned to her.

“Is ‘samurai’ a swear word?” she asked. “An awful mortal offence? Like ‘the one who had sex with their own father’ in Altean?”

The Earthlings looked at each other.

“Samurai is a noble warrior from an ancient culture to which my ancestors and Keith’s ancestors belonged,” Shiro explained. “Well, some of them.”

“Lance used to call me that sometimes,” Keith added awkwardly. “This is… him teasing me, I think.”

“But the word itself is not offensive?” Romelle kept digging.

“Usually not,” Shiro nodded. “It depends on the context, of course.”

“So, he didn’t threaten us, didn’t really wound us, just jumped out of the forest, fought with us a little and ran away? If you noticed, I froze in the beginning and didn’t use a shield, and he didn’t do me any harm.”

Keith felt ashamed. A fine leader he was! He should have looked out for Romelle, but he didn’t pay her any mind until she followed him in hot pursuit.

“We need to verify that,” Pidge murmured. “We need to check what power level he used.”

“Exactly!” As always, Hunk understood her line of thinking perfectly. “If we analyse data from our armour...”

Without further delay he summoned the holoscreen from his vambrace.

“What are they talking about?” Keith looked at Shiro, Allura and Coran.

“You can adjust the bayard’s power level,” Allura explained. “For example, Pidge’s bayard can shake you a little, paralyze or kill, depending on her wish.”

“Yeah, Lance and Hunk can adjust their settings manually using the tiny dials that are on their bayards, but I just use my mind to control it,” said Pidge, looking at her own screen. “That’s why it sometimes shook Lance harder than I planned… Damn, where is this quiznacking hit log…”

“You can change the bayard’s power level?” Keith was genuinely surprised.

“You didn’t know that?!” Shiro seemed appalled. “And I let you train with the others!.. Did you use the sharp edge the whole time?!”

“Well, I didn’t kill anybody!”

“I’ll thank the space gods twice for that then. And another three times for the fact that I’m no longer the Black Paladin,” Shiro had the gall to roll his eyes.

Yes, he seriously just did that!

Keith tried to communicate his offence through his stare.

Meanwhile, Pidge and Hunk pulled back from their screens at the same time. Pidge lowered the corners of her mouth, Hunk seemed both disappointed and a little pleased at the same time.

“Bayard wasn’t shooting at full force…” he began.

“But it packed a serious punch all the same,” Pidge continued. “As if it was out of energy but Lance wanted to at least incapacitate you.”

“That’s why mind control makes more sense,” Hunk wrapped up angrily. “Have your bayard ever lacked energy? No! But I bet that the thing that controls Lance can’t use it properly!”

“Or Lance was just super confident in his sharpshooter skills and was trying to scare you more than anything else,” Pidge rebutted. “For example, maybe his aim was to make a hole in Allura's armour and not burn her on the spot.”

“Well, that’s enough theories for now,” Keith slapped his palm with his fist. “We will continue this entertaining discussion about mind control later.”

“As if Lance had a mind to control…” Pidge murmured.

Strangely, Keith felt better after her jab at their friend. She made it feel like Lance was nearby and might walk through the door at any moment. Because they would rescue him. They would heal him if he needed healing. They would apologize if they had hurt him (and they had, for sure, since they left him here for three whole years, albeit by accident). Somehow, it would all come around. 

“At the minute,” Keith continued. “I want to know more about this planet. Coran, Shiro, have you sent the drones the second time?”

Pidge had recalled the drones before they left, afterwards they’d decided that Shiro would send them into the most promising locations, namely the area Sea indicated, and several interesting- looking landmarks nearby.

“Yes,” Shiro said, “and we have some news. Although I’m not sure it’s relevant to the search for Lance.”

“I’d say it could be incredibly relevant,” Coran said. “Especially if we’re dealing with a hostage situation and or mind control. The point of the matter is that Number Five’s first suggestion proved to be correct, and the planet indeed has sentient life…”

***

Coran and Shiro had sent drones to the edge of one of the mountain ranges. There, not very far from their landing site (and Lance’s probable location), were some of the suspicious looking clearings which Pidge thought to be artificial.

The drones’ recordings proved that Pidge was right: the clearings were made when the vegetation was burnt down and the remaining mud was covered with gravel and doused with some kind of chemical solution.

The large holoscreen displayed a short video, taken by one of the drones. First, they saw a wide field with burned tree stubs poking through wet mud. Under the low hanging grey clouds, there were dragons flying. They dove to the ground, spread their wings and from their clutches released small pouches which thudded into the mud. Almost immediately, a thin white film started crawling out around these objects.

“I have no idea what it is,” said Coran. “However, ultrasound shows that the chemicals make the ground firmer.”

“They terraform their own planet!” Pidge cheered. “Well, planetform, I guess? Mountainform? Whatever! Good job, dragons!”

“I wouldn’t be so cavalier about that,” Coran rubbed his chin. “Transforming one’s habitat is very serious business, one shouldn’t undertake it lightly. I’m not sure this dwarf quizarrl-squeak-ells can address all the implications of such a multifaceted process! As you will see in a moment, they haven’t even invented a wheel yet.”

Several smaller dragons dragging a very primitive looking sled appeared on the screen. The sled was full of little poches that looked very similar to the ones that the dragons used for firming the mud.

“Frontline delivery,” Shiro muttered.

“Frontline?” Allura echoed.

“There is resistance. You’ll see.”

A cloud of familiar moth-like bugs appeared from the forest and swarmed the dragons with the pouches. Some of them had to drop their cargo on the already doused ground, and then breathed fire on the moths.

“Whoa!” Pidge gasped. “A gas that inflames when it touches the air?”

“Looks like it,” Coran nodded.

But the natural flamethrowers were not very effective against insects. More and more swarms were rising above the forest. It seemed they didn’t bite, just stuck to the dragons’ faces like thick opaque masks. The winged sapients struggled mid-air with the onslaught and sometimes crashed into the ground. Like the first one they saw on screens.

“Looks like they rely on their sight in-flight, not on a magnetic field sensor or sonar,” Pidge adjusted her glasses with trembling fingers. “Or the moths are poisonous after all.”

“That’s seriously creepy, guys!” Hunk shuddered. “The dragons got nothing on those killer bugs!”

Keith was ready to agree with him, but suddenly the picture changed.

The carrier dragons received help — another squad of dragons, a little bigger in size and with brighter scales. Their flames, much longer and stronger, created long thin corridors in the storm of bugs. After that the whole swath of critters seemed to lose their drive and scattered in disorganized white and grey clouds — like the one Wolf raised when he leaped down on the river’s bank. 

“I don’t get it,” Pidge muttered. “Why are the attacks of these… professional soldiers… different from the others?”

“We can run a spectral analysis,” Hunk suggested. “Maybe the fire itself is different.”

At this very moment they got an opportunity to examine the fire much closer than they’d like to. One of the dragons flew straight into the screen, opening its maw extremely wide. Keith was able to see that a pair of his teeth was tied together by a metal wire. Somehow, this dental work completely convinced Keith that the dragons were sapient.

The next moment, the screen was consumed by flames.

“The drone is alright, Shiro was able to bring it back manually,” said Coran in the silence that followed. “But its cameras were burned. Very efficiently, if I may say so, both front and back.”

“Was it intentional?” Keith asked.

“It could be. But they didn’t pay any attention to our drones before that moment. As if a strange thing on their battlefield was not worthy to pay attention to.”

“You don’t have attention to spare in battle,” Shiro noted.

“Well, that’s certainly true.”

“So, we all agree that this is a war?” Pidge asked. “I mean, that both sides are sentient?”

Keith thought he clearly saw the impassioned fury behind all the whips and lassos of the moth swarms that rose above the treetops. He remembered how calculated their attacks on dragons were. Definitely an intelligent response.

So that’s what Keith said.

“Not necessarily,” Coran quickly countered. “Shirfotrusses of Temmiskir have a very complicated system of referees and colored cards for their mating fights, but nobody would call them sentient!”

Allura shook her head. “I think the moths are intelligent creatures,” she said. “Sea? What is your opinion?”

The sphere displayed: ‘I can’t tell for sure. Telepathic emittance is different above the jungle and above the mountains. It’s stronger above the jungle. Quite possibly, we are dealing with two sentient species with telepathic abilities.’

“It’s a hive mind!” Hunk moaned. “I knew that sooner or later we will have to deal with a hive mind! I was rooting for ‘later’…”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Pidge.

“They are tiny and they are bugs! What other type of sapience could they have?”

“Earth bias! You don’t even know for sure if they are insects!”

“OK, let’s scrap this yellow goop from Keith’s visor and see if there is enough space in their tiny bodies for a brain-like analytical center!”

“Let’s do it! But don’t forget that the moths may not be the source of telepathic waves but the tools of whoever emits them in the first place!” Not one to lose time, Pidge shut her laptop and stood up.

She immediately wobbled and had to sit on one of the boxes with spare parts, her eyes red and teary, blinking frantically.

“No goop scraping,” Keith ordered. “Besides, it has gone through disinfection anyway. I doubt there is much left to analyse. Take sleeping aids and sleep for at least six vargas. Both of you!”

“But…” Pidge began.

“I am doing it too,” Keith cut her short. “So is Allura, and Romelle. Yes, I know that the Alteans do not need as much sleep as humans, so you can get away with four vargas if you want. Shiro, Coran, the four varga rule applies to you too. Do it in shifts if you must, but I need each of you to sleep for at least that much because I will need you on planet surveillance when us a human, a half-galra, and a techno-gremlin..."

“Hey!” Pidge shouted.

“...are catching some z’s.”


	5. Don't worry, samurai!

Coran’s sleeping aid is powerful stuff.

Keith wasn’t sure how many ‘nights’ he spent awake. Maybe two or four. Practically nothing. Besides, it’s not like one can measure time inside the Black lion’s cockpit. There are no ‘nights’ or ‘daytime’ there.

Before, when they still had the Castle, Lance often patrolled the corridors when the lights switched to the night cycle. Well, now Keith understood he had been patrolling. At the time he was busy feeling frustrated by all the loud complaints: Lance had been rubbing his eyes, whining that he was too tired, that he couldn’t find any decent facemasks and so on…

Lance’s bellyaching always made Keith drowsy and thanks to his previous nomadic lifestyle that meant he would shortly be out like a light. If you can lie down and shut your eyes, you sleep because next time you may not be so lucky.

Pidge was not so susceptible to Lance’s little tricks, that’s why Lance and Hunk resorted to more extreme measures. They would simply grab her arms and legs and carry her to her quarters. Keith would have never gone to such lengths. He firmly believed that a person had the right to decide how they should care for their body.

Now Keith’s point of view had shifted. He understood very well what responsibility for others meant. Among other things it meant that he needed to know the limits of someone else's endurance better than that person themselves.

Several spicolian movements ago Keith even asked Shiro to travel in the Green lion to get Pidge to sleep at a reasonable schedule.

Today, since Shiro was busy with the drones, Keith checked that she had taken her sleeping pill before Wolf took her to Green. Pidge was already scrubbing her eyes and unsturdy on her feet. Even waiting in orbit while the rest of them were walking through mud hadn’t been an easy task. 

“Well, I’ll go too,” said Hunk. “Good night, leader.”

“Wait, Hunk,” Keith seemed to realize something. “Have you taken your pill?”

“Sure,” Hunk peered down at Keith with honest brown eyes.

Keith sighed, shook out another pill from the bottle Coran gave him and handed it to Hunk.

“Swallow it now, while I’m watching. And show me your mouth afterwards.”

“Keith, look, we all know you need to force Pidge to take care of herself,” said Hunk ever so sincerely. “She is still growing, she needs her sleep. But you gotta understand that we’re nowhere near ready for the mission tomorrow! I wanted to tinker with the healing pod a bit, it could be possible to power it directly from Yellow… Also, I have an idea for a telepathic detector, I scanned Sea’s platform, and I’m pretty sure I could reverse engineer…”

“Swallow,” Keith said firmly. “And drink.”

He handed Hunk a waterpack.

Hunk sighed and gave in.

For a spell Keith was tempted not to swallow his own pill. There was so much he needed to do. He could go talk to Sea about the characteristics of telepathic emittance or keep an eye on the planet with Shiro and Coran — Keith was probably better at noticing white-and-blue armor within the jungle… what is six hours of sleep anyway, it wouldn’t be his first time to go without!

But — noblesse oblige. Or something like that.

Keith even chewed down the pill for it to work faster. It tasted bitter.

The pill was probably at fault. Or his general level of anxiety was. Because the dream Keith had was incredibly anxiety inducing, stupid and also a bit bitter like that pill.

Keith was sitting on one of Castle’s observation decks, ploughing through an analytical paper on two closest Galran clusters, when a salty sea wave rushed into the room and scattered into billions of drops among the stars. On its cusp a surfer in blue swim shorts was standing, his smile pearly-white and victorious. It was Lance, of course. But not the Lance Keith saw on the planet, taller and with broader shoulders, but the one Keith saw two months ago, the one three years younger.

“Well, aren’t you a hero!” he shouted, leaning on Keith’s shoulders heavily and looking at the map on the table. “A real astronaut! Pity you have missed the most important thing!”

“What have I missed?” Keith asked.

Then he suddenly turned and saw that through the giant windows of the observation deck there was no longer a vertical profile of a unknown galaxy, looking a bit like a giant cat’s pupil, but a very familiar green and violet planet (they say it used to be blue, before the pollution). Eurasia was upside down for some reason.

That was a welcomed sight, but a galra fleet around it definitely wasn’t.

“Don’t worry, samurai!” Lance laughed. “You’re safe as long as I’m with you!”

He lifted his palm towards the attack fleet, and blew as if wishing on a dandelion, causing the attack fleet that bristled ominously with ion cannons to transform into a swarm of white moths. They surrounded Keith and Lance, enveloping them with the scent of the sea.

Tiny bugs tangled in Keith’s hair, tiny legs crawled along his cheeks and forehead. He shouted — and felt the fluttering of tiny wings in his mouth.

He was on the verge of puking his guts out.

He hardly realized that he was awake, leaning down over the edge of his cot, clenching the T-shirt on his chest and dry coughing — probably to try and push the phantom feeling of insects out of his throat.

“Keith!” Allura’s voice came through the internal alarm system. “We need to move as soon as possible! Coran detected Lance. He is in trouble!”

***

The border between the grayish green wall of the forest and the bald mud-laden “freeway” was sharp, as if a force field was erected to separate the jungle from the rolling, increasingly rocky foothills covered with short, dry and scraggly shrubs with small leathery leaves instead of now familiar water-seeping trees.

From the point where Keith was standing, on a rocky outcrop on one of the lesser hills that were seemingly ascending to the main mountain range like giant stairs, the border looked like the divide between two worlds.

Even the air here was different, according to the sensors. No more stale heat, the wind speed reached ten meters per second. Keith wanted to take off his helmet to feel this wind on his face, but he couldn’t. First of all, Sea and Coran warned them against taking off their armor. Second, whatever opinion Lance might have had about his fashion choices, Keith didn’t want his hair burned by a stray flame.

Which was a very real risk, taking into account the fierce fight unraveling right before his eyes.

Moths and dragons were once again fighting for the disputed territory, only this time Keith and the others hadn’t seen the beginning of the battle. When they landed, the smaller dragons carrying pouches (Keith called them workers) were already gone, but the warrior dragons in airborne squads of maybe ten to twelve individuals were darkening the pale sky with their sheer numbers.

Close up they looked much larger than on screens. Their bodies were the size of a largish dog, and their wingspan could rival a small plane. Maybe that’s why it looked as if there were hundreds of them. The battle was even more ferocious than the one they watched through the drone’s feed the day before.

But the worst thing was that the paladins couldn’t find Lance’s location. Pidge was able to catch his signature — not a signal from a broken armor, but his infrared signature (it seemed the swamps were blessedly devoid of animals of comparable size), but the resolution left much to be desired, and, when they landed, they lost Lance again. It was clear Lance was nearby, but looking for him was nearly impossible. The dragons were of comparable size, and they were flying in different directions; the gas they breathed out was warm and ignited into fire; the moths rising from the forest also added to the interference. No bioscanner could work in such conditions.

Several doboshes ago, charging towards the battle through thick atmosphere, Keith was sure that if only he was there, he’d be able to spot Lance somehow. But both his human eyes and Blue’s sonar, who tried to find Lance with all her power, seemed useless.

More and more clouds of moths raised from the forest and attacked dragons above the wide clayish field. The noise level rose to a thundering level as if on the floor of a metal-processing factory. It looked like the moths couldn’t fly up the foothills because of the strong wind that made them lose direction. But, to Keith’s surprise, he saw several swarms of moths rising from the rocky ground behind the dragons. Had they been walking?! He wondered how many days it could take.

The dragons sure were practicing an organized fight: they covered each other’s backs, sometimes maneuvered so that they could combine streams of inflammatory gas to make them wider and farther reaching. Moreover, some of the squads were escorting something… no, guarding! After watching dragons for some time Keith realized that the smaller workers didn’t completely leave the battlefield. Many of them were flying in the middle of fighter squads carrying the very same pouches in their talons. If they managed to reach the edge of the forest, they would drop the missiles on the vegetation which would quickly wither and die.

But very few dragons managed to reach the jungle: the moths were keeping their border secure. More and more dragons crash landed in the mud, blinded, with their leathery wings broken beyond recognition. Some of them tried to leap up and fly, but most just lay there, sometimes turning their narrow snouts up to the white sky and bleating like sheep.

Where was Lance in all this chaos?

Why was he near the battlefield? Was it connected with his mysterious ‘things to do’?

“Are we intervening?” Allura asked angrily. Apparently, she was thinking the same thoughts. “Keith? It’s your call.”

Blue was standing on a hill, tense and ready to pounce, her tail whipping at her sides. Black was next to her, with Yellow and Green cruising the sky in search for Lance. Neither dragons nor moths paid any attention to the giant metal lions.

“No, we’re waiting,” Keith replied. “We know nothing about this conflict. We don’t know what Lance is up to.”

 _What is Lance up to… Maybe he’s involved,_ Keith thought, _but in what capacity?_

Lance might have taught himself sword fighting while Keith was away, but he was a sharpshooter first and foremost. Guns and rifles were his dearest passion. If he had decided to take part in the mayhem, he’d do it as a sniper. And where was the best position for a sniper on this terrain?

Well, it could be anywhere, they were in the mountains!

That is, if Lance was on the side of the dragons. But if he was on the side of the forest?

“I got nothing!” Pidge said in clipped voice. “Trying to up the resolution, but…”

“There he is!” Keith didn’t realize at first he said that out loud.

On the right of the long frontline, where a sharp rock was sticking up above the foothills, he saw familiar red flashes in the thick of the forest. Lance’s bayard.

Black was leaping into the air before Keith gave him the order.

Blue tried to follow him, but Keith shouted: “Allura, wait! He attacked you last time! Let’s not risk it.”

Lance wasn’t atop of the rock; it was bold and narrow, vulnerable to aerial attacks. Lance found himself a better hideout: a ginormous tree towering above its neighbours, the difference being maybe several stories worth of distance. The closeness to the rock was useful too, Keith realised: the rocky offset shielded the moths from the wind allowing them to circumvent the dragons.

Clever tactics, damn them! Something Lance would do.

Could Lance really be a bugs’ ally? Or, was he assisting an unknown entity that controlled the bugs and lived in the depth of the forest?

The moths were swarming the giant tree preventing Keith from seeing what was happening among the branches. What could he do in a situation like this? Fire his laser? Use his jaw blade?

Black landed near the edge of the forest, splintering the drying mud crust under his weight. His four paws went deep, but the giant beast dragged them out and made another leap. Keith made a mental note not to put all his weight on this ground: the mud was deep enough to swallow him whole. 

Fortunately, he didn’t have to: this short leap brought Black very close to the trees. He stretched his neck far enough for Keith to jump from his open mouth to the wide and slightly singed branch hanging above the mud. Now he just needed to move forward!

Dozens of moths bombarded his visor. Keith growled, wiping them with his glove — you won’t stop me! I don’t give a damn if you are a sentient species or not, you’re not standing (well, flying) in my way!

Run to the end of this branch, then jump over to the next one — the distance is a bit of a stretch, but his jet pack should cover it. Now up: another big leap, pulling himself up and going forward… Lance was visible at this point, above him and a little to the left, his white and blue armor a stark contrast to the surrounding leaves. It was probably the first time Keith was glad that the paladins armour was so flashy, unlike the Blades’ uniform.

Now, pulling himself once more — Keith was left standing on the broad branch leading to Lance almost like a red carpet. The bastard nestled himself comfortably in the fork between several branches. He made himself a real snipers’ nest, padded with some soft looking leaves. He even had some fruit there, probably as a snack!

“Lance!” Keith shouted with a mix of relief and irritation he hadn’t expected of himself.

(“Keith!” Allura cried out in his earpiece. “Have you found him?! How is he?!”)

Keith didn’t know what to say now. ‘What the quiznack’ again? ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ ‘Are you being blackmailed?’ ‘How are you?’

To Keith’s great surprise, Lance beamed at him, his expression the same as when Keith came to their rescue after his fight with clone Shiro.

“Keith! I’m so happy to see you! Come on, come here!”

He moved, making space in the ‘nest’ beside him, and Keith, a little stunned by this excitement (and by the lack of digs about his haircut) accepted this invitation.

(Hunk: “Keith, talk to us!”

Pidge: “Get off him, he’ll tell us when he has more intel!”)

Lance immediately grabbed Keith by his shoulders and tugged him into a tight embrace. Keith’s face heated up despite him not being able to feel the contact through the armor. ‘Stop it!’ he scolded himself. ‘You are flirting with death every day! You are the leader of the team of warriors who had saved the whole Universe several times over! Why the quiznack are you blushing?!’

During this inner meltdown Lance pulled back a bit to grace Keith with such a tender smile that Keith almost choked on thick and viscous saliva because there was suddenly too much of it.

“You’re finally here!” Lance exclaimed. “Quiznack, I’m so glad you guys are alive! I was so afraid you got caught by that blast… I mean, I was shot out so far, it’s no wonder you were searching for me so long!”

“I… I’m very sorry, we just...” Keith honestly didn’t know what to say, and the worried voices of the other paladins in his earpiece didn’t help. (Allura: “He is not angry at us, is he? Tell him we never stopped searching for him!” Hunk: “He does remember us, right?” Pidge: “Seriously, shut up, guys! Keith is gonna switch his radio off any minute now, and I won’t blame him!”)

“Hey, don’t apologize, it wasn’t that bad!” Lance waved him off. “I had company, they even appreciated my better qualities!” He made finger guns. “The best sharpshooter on the whole planet, eh? Sounds great, doesn’t it?”

“Lance, what are you doing here?” Keith choked out at last. “Why did you attack Allura? Do you remember attacking her? How did you survive here all this time? How do you shave?”

“Seriously?” Lance gaped at him. “Did you seriously just…” he choked on his laughter. “How do I shave! Madre de dios!”

Keith has never heard Lance talking in Spanish before. He felt ashamed for some reason.

“Oof, no, seriously, about Allura, that was my mistake,” Lance forced out at last when he stopped laughing. “It was a complicated situation, I didn’t have a response ready, and when I’m confused, my body starts acting kind of on autopilot,” he shrugged. “Fight or flight, you know?”

“Hallucinations?” Keith thought of Shiro.

“Something like that,” Lance’s stare became heavy and unfocused, the same as Shiro’s when he was plagued by difficult memories. “Listen, do you want to get out of here? It’s not the best place to talk.”

If the Christian god or Great Marmora existed, only they knew what Lance had to endure during these three years in the jungle. But his sharpshooting skills got even better. He probably didn’t mean to kill Allura when he shot her.

“Yes, let’s get out,” Keith nodded. “Red is waiting for you in orbit.”

For a brief moment Lance looked guilty. “Sorry, Keith, I really have things to do here. You gotta keep your promises, especially fun ones!”

(Pidge: “Is he kidding?!” Hunk and Allura, together: “Shut up!!”)

Keith remembered that Wolf refused to return to the planet, covering his head with his paws.

“Still, we could talk in space, we have a base there. You know us, we will help you no matter what. Even if you messed with this moth-dragon war. Or did you decide to abandon Voltron? And what about Red? He is waiting for you.”

That guilty expression returned on Lance’s face in full force. “Listen, it’s really very complicated! I can’t just explain it, you need to see with your own eyes! Come with me!” He offered Keith his hand. “There is a path down the trunk here, and then we can take a shortcut to my evil lair.” He winked teasingly at Keith. “It’s not far, I promise.”

Somehow, looking at Lance’s hand in the cracked up glove, Keith hesitated. But he quickly dismissed his doubts. It was still Lance. Lance whom he saw in his dreams, Lance whom he missed terribly. Lance who was talking just like always and smiling, with no traces of this mind control Hunk was so afraid about. They probably just blew the situation out of proportion in their heads. So what if Lance was behaving strangely before? He had plenty of reason!

“Let’s go,” Keith said, taking his hand.

But his other hand moved toward his bayard unconsciously.

He probably shouldn’t have ignored the unpleasant buzz of his intuition at the back of his head. He probably should have asked Allura, Hunk and Pidge to come with them. He should have just hit Lance on the head and dragged him into Black.

But Lance was inviting him, and holding his hand, and promising an explanation. And Keith was just too weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have guessed, next chapter the shit will really hit the fan!


	6. Lair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Body Horror tag alert! Something really unpleasant happens at the end of this chapter, brace yourself. Those who want it spoiled are invited to take a peek into the end notes.

Keith would never thought that here, in the swamp, one could dig up an underground shelter without the risk of flooding it. But when they descended the tree and reached the surface, Lance immediately got to work, searching between the roots. Panting with effort, he lifted a big chunk of earth with roots hanging from it. It uncovered a tunnel with ribbed walls built not with dirt or clay, but with... 

“It’s a hollow root!” Lance said proudly. “There are a lot of them. It’s a whole labyrinth, like a city sewage system. The only thing it lacks is ninja turtles.”

“What’s the pizza situation?” Keith asked peering down the dark pathway, warily.

Lance moaned. “Man, don’t remind me!”

It was such a familiar moan and such familiar banter, that Keith relaxed a little bit — against his better judgement.

Navigating the tunnel was harder than expected: there were narrow cuts in the bark, but not wide enough to plant a foot. Keith ended up using his jet pack, but Lance was moving as spry and easy as if he was born and raised in these tunnels. A jump, a leap, a kick off — and he was standing on the “floor”. When Keith joined him, he saw that from there the hollow root was leading somewhere deeper into the forest.

There were luminescent wavy stripes along the tunnel, like emergency lighting on a plane, turning complete darkness into uncertain twilight. Some kind of fluid was slowly trickling down the walls.

It really looked like the guts of a sewage system.

“I hope it smells better than I imagine,” Keith said.

Lance giggled. “No such luck, it’s even worse, mullet. You’d better keep your helmet on until we’re there.”

According to Keith’s telemetry, they walked for one point three miles. Lance spent the whole time peppering Keith with questions about how the paladins were doing during his absence.

“More than a year to Earth!” he muttered at some point. “God, that’s crazy, man.”

“I’m sorry you got stuck here for so long,” said Keith. “We didn’t know we were thrown three years into the future by the blast. With Blades keeping radio silence, we had no outside contacts.”

“And what would have happened if you realized?” Lance smiled crookedly, which immediately made him look older. “Best case scenario, you could speed up a bit and be here a couple of weeks earlier. Same difference. I’m already used to living here.”

“How are you so… alright?”

“You’re kidding, right? How could I not be alright? You keep forgetting I’m the best ninja sharpshooter and survival specialist on the team!” 

This boasting sounded hollow to Keith’s ears. He could be overthinking things, he supposed, but he couldn’t suppress the memory of Lance attacking Allura. And it was a serious assault, too, not pretend. Besides, Lance’s evasiveness didn’t sit well with him. 

“Did you find allies here in the forest?” asked Keith. “You said you made some promises, the ‘fun ones’. What fun are you supposedly having here?”

“You’re still that same impatient Keith, huh? I promise I’ll tell you when we get to the spot. We’re almost there.”

“If we were in a horror movie, that would be how a killer would lure a victim,” Keith said casually.

(“Please note it was someone else who said that,” Hunk snorted in Keith’s earpiece.

“Do you seriously think Lance is such a threat to us?” asked Pidge.

“Considering the epic Shiro’s clone chapter of our lives, do I think that the teammate who attacked us and probably is under mind control at the moment might be a serious threat? Yeah, pretty much.”) 

Lance chuckled. “As if you make good game! Too much effort for a couple bites of low grade meat. Which is probably poisonous.”

Keith almost started to argue that his meat wasn’t low-grade or poisonous, but caught himself in time. “Why do you think that I’m only good for getting eaten?”

“What else could you be good for?” Lance seemed to catch himself too. “Sorry, sorry, I know I’m kind of bonkers right now. I need to spend some more time with you to reverse course.” He winked.

“Food was hard to get?”

“Food is plentiful, meat is scarce. Mostly insects, and those don’t have much protein. Well, there is fish, too, but it’s too bony.”

“You don’t look starved.”

Lance didn’t look very thin… at least, not thinner than Keith remembered him. His legs were certainly just as long and powerful, and his gait was as agile… Damn, Keith wished he could afford focusing on Lance’s legs now!

Instead, he had to worry about his mental state.

“Well, I didn’t get enough calories at first, until I figured out how to feed myself. I found this local fruit, I call it soy beans. They are protein rich, but taste like unsweetened marshmallows.”

“Sounds like you ate way better than we did when we first arrived at the Castle.”

Lance laughed. “Hunk was right, you’re learning how to crack jokes after all!”

“Do you want to talk to him? To Hunk?”

Keith couldn’t see Lance’s reaction, because he was several paces ahead, but his posture and his stride didn’t change. “We’re here!” Lance exclaimed. “Welcome to my humble abode, oh fearless Black Paladin!”

Keith felt an unpleasant pang: Lance didn’t ask much about Shiro. Keith said something vague like “And then Shiro woke up”, and Lance just accepted it as if he was not really interested in the story.

Did Lance even know Shiro had been a clone, and that they re-wrote the original mind in the clone’s body? And that the real Shiro died during the battle with Zarkon, but Black managed to save him into his own memory?

Keith tried to remember if it was explained before or after Lance’s disappearance and couldn’t. That time was full of gaps in his mind, because of all the rush, and drama, and fighting. Shiro went crazy, Lance vanished… Everything got lumped together into a single nightmare and Keith preferred not to think about it. If someone asked him how they managed to defeat Lotor and survive, he wouldn’t be able to give them a good answer. 

Maybe they were simply able to endure the hostile environment longer than Lotor? A victory on points. Or did they deal a final blow after all?

In all honesty, Keith couldn’t remember. It was the greatest win of his life, but he had no idea how they managed it.

He ran out of time to further think or question Lance — the tunnel had ended by a largish hub. It was brighter here: many thin shafts of lights pierced through the darkness which was murky and grayish as if underwater.

“Tada! Check out what I did with this place! Isn’t it awesome?” Lance side-armed Keith into a hug. If not for the helmet, Keith would have felt his breaths on his cheek.

His recent dream sprang to mind; Lance blowing on dandelion fluff made of galra fleet.

“Yeah, it’s awesome,” Keith didn’t know what else to say.

He wouldn’t call the room awesome even in a fevered dream. Well, Hunk or Pidge could very well like it...

The center of the room was occupied by a long table full of hollowed out vessels. If they were on Earth, Keith would say they were made of cut bamboo. Some of them were covered, the others were connected by thick transparent tubes. Some tubes were full of liquids, the rest of vapor.

The table was very long, maybe sixty or seventy feet, and the set up was good enough for a chemical plant… probably. Keith had no idea what industrial-grade chemical equipment looked like.

The walls of the room were covered by thick white squiggling velvet, which made Keith sick to his stomach any time his eyes landed on it. But when he managed to really look at it, he realized it was the same unpleasant threads that were growing out of coily roots on the surface. He never saw them covering the roots like a carpet, though.

“This looks like a lab made by a mad scientist stuck on a deserted island. You’re living the dream.”

Lance laughed again. “Your jokes just get funnier and funnier! Are you angling for the team clown position too? Aren’t you indispensable enough as it is?”

The words had a lot of unpleasant implications, but even if they didn’t, Keith wasn’t pleased with what was going on one bit. Even the fact that Lance seemed the same as ever didn’t help. How could he be the same as ever? Why was he holding up so great? Why didn’t he have a meltdown?

A firefighters’ siren was wailing somewhere in the back of Keith’s mind.

“Seriously, Lance. What is going on?”

“You’e right — I’m becoming a mad scientist! It turns out that, I remember quite a bit from biology class at school. Enough to create some experiments. Also, I never would’ve guessed that I retained so much from Coran’s wild stories! Did you know the brain actually stores everything it is taught, it’s just that our conscious mind can’t always reach it?”

“What did you experiment on?”

“On this,” Lance waved his hands around pointing at the velvet walls.

“Oh, I just thought you were a terrible interior designer.”

“Ha, if only! They are embryos!”

“Embryos?” Keith hoped he didn’t hear that right.

“Yes, moths’ embryos. The first stage of their lifecycle. They grow fat, fall off and start living in the water like maggots. I experiment on maggots too, but that’s in the adjacent room. You see, you can feed them with different nutrition formulae, and they grow very different too! They also understand my orders. You could say, we had three years to find a common language!”

Now that he mentioned it, Keith realized that there were no moths around. They were usually everywhere in the jungle, except in this very room.

“So you can’t return with us because of your experiments? Or are the moths holding you hostage?”

“No, Keith, I can’t for realsies,” Lance was across from him, very serious. A beam of light was illuminating his weather beaten face, his bright blue eyes. Keith could look at this picture forever, but he had less than a second: almost immediately Lance turned to the table and started to make a tower of hollowed out cups. “You know, we as Voltron must protect the weak, right? I wasn’t the best paladin, but I want to protect these little guys. The freaking flying lizards, you saw them, are the real monsters! They burn down the forest with chemicals, poison everything… What is worse, they progress rapidly! Only a couple hundred years ago they were gnawing tools out of wood, now they make chemical weapons! What is going to happen when they start building factory plants?”

The tower of cups became too tall, and fell over, the cups scattering atop of the table. Lance cursed but didn’t start rebuilding it.

“Wait, so you are trying to mediate between two species at war? All by yourself? Lance, how can you be sure the moths are sentient?” Keith remembered Hunk’s words about a hive mind. If it was Lance commanding the insects and planning operations against dragons, it meant they could be just regular animals after all. Maybe with an ability to telepathically perceive Lance’s orders and amplify his thoughts.

“They were sentient enough to save me when I crashed here,” Lance said. “They healed me, gave me a shelter. How can I abandon them after that?”

The feeling of wrongness became even stronger. An overpowering desire to take Lance at his word and be annoyed by his misplaced nobleness was fighting with rising suspicion. Something didn’t quite add up. If the moths were sentient, where was their civilization? Why didn’t they try to contact the paladins?

How can Lance hope to seriously impact the conflict of two species? Even in the best case scenario he could only tip the balance in one area, but the war between the forest and the mountains was going on across the whole planet!

And the most important thing: when did Lance become a chemistry nerd? Keith didn’t remember Lance in the Garrison since he hadn’t paid attention to any of the fellow students, but he was reasonably sure Lance had never been a biochemistry genius. It wasn’t like him to keep even an imaginary talent hidden, much less a real one! And he would be able to make a much better laboratory in the Castle!

“Lance,” Keith did something he almost never did: he put his hand on Lance’s shoulder. “It makes you a great person that you feel that way. But why do you think we would be against helping you? Allura is a great diplomat, she is experienced in making both sides…”

“Well, maybe I want to do it myself for once!” for a moment Lance’s face got intense, maybe in fury or dismay, but this expression disappeared almost instantly. “Without Allura! And without you, to be honest!”

“Lance…”

“No, seriously! Why was it OK for you to fuck off to the Blades for half a year, in search of inner peace or something and why can’t I do the same?”

That sense of wrongness lit up Keith’s mind with neon lamps, and the firefighter’s siren switched into a police one.

“Because we are flying home, Lance! Don’t you want to see Earth?!”

Lance stepped back, shaking off Keith’s hand. Keith had never seen him so frightened, even when they were dealing with overwhelmingly large Galra forces he had been calmer. But Lance averted his eyes almost immediately, hiding his fear.

“I can’t go to Earth now, Keith! I just can’t!”

“What’s stopping you?!”

“You won’t understand!”

“Look me in the eye, Lance!”

“Then you look me in the eye too! Directly, not through this space glass! Or are you too good for that now?!”

Keith immediately raised his visor. Contrary to what he expected, the room didn’t smell much like anything, not even like chemicals. He could catch a weak scent of wet mud and tree. Apart from that, it was as hot as a Turkish bathhouse, Keith’s skin immediately prickled.

“Come on!” Hell, he couldn’t express how much he had been missing that spark in Lance’s eyes whenever they bumped heads! Lance was glaring at Keith with such focused fire as if he didn’t see anybody or anything else in the whole word.

“So, now, look me in the eyes,” Keith said softly, “and say one more time that you won’t come home.”

“Oh god, I missed you so much!” Lance mumbled a non-sequitur.

After that, he did something unimaginable: he stepped closer and hugged Keith. For a tick Keith’s brain short circuited thinking that Lance was going to kiss him, but he only pulled Keith into a very tight embrace, his breath tickling Keith’s ear.

“I want you to stay too,” Lance muttered. “Together we will be able to do so much!”

The sirens in Keith’s head shrieked like a fire alarm. The tickling sensation creeped into his ear, something seemed to crawl inside — a disgusting feeling!

Keith cried out and shoved Lance off. Something was still wriggling in his ear, trying to get into the canal. Keith clapped his hand over his ear, then picked at the inside in a panic. For several awful seconds he thought he was not going to catch the little sleazy thing, but then his fingers squeezed something. He plucked it out and brought it up to his eyes. A tiny half-crushed grey-winged body was still squirming on his fingertip.

“Quiz-znack!” Keith shut his visor tight.

Lance was sitting on the ground smiling. Another grey moth crawled from his nostril, shook its rear and spread its wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, Lance is a host to moths now, and they crawl out of his body through the nose.


	7. I, the hive

“Keith!” Hunk shouted in his earpiece. “What’s going on?”

“Do you need help?” Allura’s voice sounded almost calm and collected.

“Your telemetry is all over the place!” Pidge informed.

Yeah, Keith knew his telemetry displayed a quick heart rate, elevated blood pressure and abnormally high temperature probably too.

He realized that he had unconsciously moved into a fighting stance and that the business end of his bayard, already in sword form, was pointed at Lance. And that Lance was still smiling, not trying to defend himself physically or verbally.

“A moth just crawled into my ear,” Keith said loudly. “It skittered out of Lance’s mouth or nose, right into my ear! And… there’s still more coming out of him.”

“What?!” Allura gasped.

“Get me more data!” Pidge demanded.

Hunk let loose a string of expletives, very impressive sounding and mostly unfamiliar to Keith.

Keith didn’t bother to swear. There were no words in Altean, or Galran, or in any Earth language that could suitably describe what he felt.  
He lifted his hand (the right one) and switched off the audio transmitter, so that the others could hear him but wouldn’t be able to distract.

“Huh, my mistake,” said Lance. “I kind of hoped you wanted to swap biomatter with me, honey pie!” He winked.

Given the situation, hearing one of Lance’s crude and cheesy pick-up lines was so absurd, that Keith almost lowered his bayard.

“Biomatter?!”

“What do you got against insects? By the way, I’m not actually insects. The closest Earth equivalent would be something like… corals? Or medusae?”

“You, who?! Who are you referring to?” Keith barked. “The closest Earth equivalent for you is an idiot! And a crazy jerk!”

“I, the hive,” Lance said simply.

The room was engulfed in a quiet but very distinctive rustling. Again, Keith wasn’t quick enough to spot where the moths came from, but they were so many that they blocked nearly all the lighting and caused Keith’s field of vision to shrink to less than a couple of feet.

Keith growled and swung his sword — no dice. A sword is not a fire torch, it’s useless against insects.

Krolia taught him: if you can’t see, rely on your instincts. Close your eyes, listen to your enemy, feel your enemy. Become your enemy. Ha. Keith’s didn’t have any desire to become a swarm of moths, especially since he strongly suspected it was something they would like. They’d be happy to get him the same way they got Lance.

So, Hunk was right after all. What else is new.

Maybe it was his instincts that helped him, maybe it was his mother’s lessons, but Keith dodged to the right just in time to feel the heat of a red beam whizz by his temple. Lance was shooting at him! Unlike Keith, he wasn’t blinded by the bug infestation.

Keith stumbled to the ground, rolled and scrambled up again. He crouched low, holding the sword far from his body. The moths crash-landed on his visor by the dozen, their crushed bodies smearing the glass. Now he wouldn’t be able to see anything even if most of them leave. The same tactics as during the fight with the dragons, except they couldn’t bite through his armor after all.

Dragons! If only Keith had a flamethrower...

Krolia instructed him: try to read quintessence. We are not Alteans nor Druids, but we still can learn something.

Keith closed his eyes, a futile gesture though it was, and concentrated as hard as he could. There!

He swung his sword wide, and its end nicked something. A short yelp of pain followed.

“Lance!”

Lance didn’t answer, but Keith sensed danger. He leaped again, collided with the corner of a lab table (the rattle of vessels followed) and veered away. Judging by the thrumming laser sound, Lance almost shot him. Quiznack, fuck it! Never before had Keith been so clearly aware of the fact that guns are far superior to blades. Even if Voltron’s blade is the ultimate weapon. 

The coolest form of Voltron’s blade is on fire… Pidge once told him it was a kind of special quantum probabilistic flame, because real fire needed oxygen, and there were no oxygen in open space.

Lance could command his bayard to take on different shapes. Hunk could too. Zarkon changed his weapon to pretty much whatever he wanted. But neither Keith nor Pidge nor Allura nor Shiro (during that very short time he used one) learnt to change their own bayards. Keith knew he was unlikely to master this skill in the brief seconds left till the next Lance’s shot. But what if...

Keith dug deep inside himself, set aside his wrath, his dismay and sheer panic of having to fight Lance, and found that quiet place where Black was waiting for him, monumental and calm as space itself.

No, they just looked calm — both Black and space. That endless chaotic boiling of quantum fields, the song of strings that the very fabric of reality was made of, what was it if not fire? Space was burning too.

His sword hand grew warmer. Keith swung his sword one more time and heard another yelp or a moan. Red bursts of flame were visible even through his smudged visor.

He did it!

Keith brought his sword very close to his visor. The flames danced on the space plexiglass for a brief moment and died almost instantly, but cleared most of his view.

The situation still wasn’t good: the moths were roving around, just keeping a bit of a distance, as the flaming sword was scaring them off. Now, if only Lance would try to shoot again, then, Keith would see where he was.

Lance shot at him again.

From above.

Trying to dodge, Keith dropped and rolled aside. He made it in time by sheer dumb luck; the spot where he was staying a tick ago was charred. This was not funny. This was a serious deal. Lance’s bayard was all powered up. Maybe it wouldn’t have ended Keith, since the armor would have absorbed some damage, but it would have been sure to seriously incapacitate him.

“Lance!” Keith shouted. “Do you really wanna kill me?!”

“Of course not! Who do you think I am?! ” Lance cried in mock indignation from inside the moth cloud. “I honestly feel so attacked right now!”

“Just stop attacking _me_!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll patch you up later! Works better than a healing pod!”

Keith growled and raised the sword above his head. Damn it, why didn’t his ‘destiny’, altean magic and lions’ headstrong consciousness let him have a fucking gun?! He could use something like Hunk’s grenade launcher right about now! 

The bayard became heavier, and Keith have almost dropped his weapon out of surprise. He could only spare a quick glance at whatever was in his hands — something like an automatic rifle, but with a long and wide tube in place of a barrel — and knew already what it was and how to use it.

Blue fire thrusted from the barrel and instantly raked through the thick veil of flying moths, then spread above the lab table — some flasks blew up, others caught fire. Singed insects dropped on the floor as ash and tiny embers. Lance cried out again. Keith had a glimpse of him, covering his face with his hands. Hell, no, Lance has no helmet! How could Keith forget about it!

The flamethrower reverted to the null form, without Keith’s conscious command.

“Lay down your bayard! I don’t want to hurt you!”

A new wave of moths hit Keith.

He never thought that a mass of insects could make a grown man waver on his feet or send him sprawling, at least, outside of a cartoon. But that’s what happened with him right now. The insects hit him like a surging wave, threw him over the room and into the wall. His helmet bumped the bark, his head swam, his ears rang.

Stunned, Keith watched most of the moths in this hit wave dropping on the floor, making quite a heap. Some were wriggling, trying to get up, most lay unmoving.

At this very moment Keith spotted Lance, eyes dark with fury, snarling, a red stripe of a new burn on his cheek. He swung his white-and-red sword, preparing to end Keith.

Keith didn’t get how he managed to dodge again. He was close to blacking out.

The long lab table now was burning, like a fiery border dividing the room. Red tints were dancing on Lance’s armor.

“Damn you... “ Lance muttered, plucking his stuck sword out of the wood. “Why can’t you just lose when you’re outnumbered? I don’t want to accidentally smash your head, Red!”

Keith attempted to shield himself with a bayard — and realized he didn’t have it anymore. He tried to concentrate and summon it, but his ears were still ringing, and nausea were not letting up his throat. Crap, he didn’t need a concussion on top of everything else! The armor were supposed to cushion that blow. Apparently, it was worn out after the recent fight with the druid. Coran did complain it was almost impossible to repair anything without the Castle...

Now that really was a quiznack up.

The world was shook with a thunderous roar.

A giant mechanical paw broke through the lair’s wall, as if through the wet cardboard. Greyish daylight and water immediately flooded through the hole. Apparently, Lance’s secret laboratory was partially submerged.

The breach was somewhat shielded by the massive chest of the Black lion. He lowered his head and roared again; now instead of his chest Keith saw his opened mouth with the shining blue circle of the central command core.

Lance, who fell into the water at the initial shake down, stood up and chuckled.

“Yeah, looks like a stalemate, buddy,” he offered his hand to Keith. “Come on, stand up.”

It was too much. The bayard jumped into his palm almost on its own volition; breathing heavily, Keith brandished it sitting down, with the water up to his waist. The fury behind the swing was so powerful that even with that handicap Lance was barely quick enough to jerk his hand back.

“Hey, watch what you are doing!” he complained, sounding as if he was sincerely hurt. “I was really just trying to help!”

Keith felt the ground under him shake again, then twice more. Two other lions had landed. Soon they’d come here and everything would be over. They’d subdue Lance and get him to the base, and there Allura and Sea would sort out whatever rats (or, in this case moths) he had in the attic. Nothing to it. They’d do it. Everything would be alright.

That’s what Keith said. The words felt heavy in his mouth but he pushed them out. He stood up by himself, grabbing the wall. The white larvae on it were shying from his hand.

“No, no way Jose,” Lance shook his head. “I won’t go with you voluntarily. If you want to get something from me, you’ll have to play by my rules.”

“I told you, we’ll round you up,” Keith said.

“Like hell you will,” Lance was grinning. “I have full control over this body. If you lay a finger on it, it will stop breathing.”

“What the… you’re bluffing!”

“Do you want to check? Be my guest!”

He suddenly fell back into the water, arms akimbo, with a huge splash.

“Lance!” Keith wanted to rush to him, but checked himself. It was a trick. As soon as he got close, Lance would take him hostage, pressing his blade to Keith’s neck, and Black wouldn’t be able to do a thing — he was too big.

Keith made himself wait. There were no bubbles coming up, nothing! No, he couldn’t wait after all, he needed to help...

But Lance was already sitting up.

“Fuf, I think I’m gonna get a mother of all bumps,” he complained, rubbing at his scalp. “Or I would if not for regeneration. It’s a great body, I’m not complaining, but it has some constructive failures! I’d feel much better if I had one or two more to spare…” He pouted. “Why didn’t you come to check if I was breathing? I thought we had a bonding moment!”

Keith clenched his jaw, overwhelmed with fury and hurt. Was this thing torturing him on purpose? Or was it trying to sincerely get on Keith’s good side? Are human emotions completely alien to it, or does it have a good grasp?

Then it dawned on Keith.

Struggling with his headache which made every word a pain, he said: “If it’s you who controls this body, then I don’t give a fuck if it breathes or not. We will burn this forest down to a quiznacking crisp. And you’ll burn with it too. Let the dragons have the swamp.”

“What?!” Lance’s eyes bulged. “You can’t! You’re the paladins!”

“Yes, and it’s our duty to protect the Universe from miserable body-snatching vermin!”

“If you destroy me, you’ll never have Lance again!”

“Was there a possibility that we’re going to have him at all?”

“Well, yes, sure! As soon as we straighten up this dragon business. I don’t mind piloting Red again! Out of all of myself, only Lance saw other stars — or any stars at all, for that matter — but he didn’t see much and understood even less! The whole of me will gain much more useful knowledge!” A winning smile appeared on Lance’s lips.

Keith felt a bout of nausea again. “That’s why we will never let you reach the stars.”

“Are you really willing to kill me?” There was real hurt in Lance’s eyes. “Me, Lancey-Lance?”

Keith bit his cheek to taste blood. Does _it_ really have access to all of Lance’s personality, to all his silly gimmicks, to all his invented-on-the-spot even sillier nicknames?

Mother taught him: if you don’t know how to win, become your enemy. Or at least pretend for a second.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” he said, poker-faced. “I never liked Lance. And I dislike you even more.”

“You told me you don’t want to hurt me!”

Yes, Keith remembered his own desperate plea a minute ago. “I lied.”

“But… what about the Red lion?!”

“Romelle could pilot him. Allura says, she has what it needs.”

That was an open and obvious lie: Keith didn’t know anyone who was less fitted to the role of the Red Paladin than Romelle. She could maybe win the attention of Yellow or Blue, but even that was dubious at best. The only hope was that Lance hadn’t had a chance to know her and wouldn’t understand the bluff.

“You are a dirty liar!” the _thing_ screeched in Lance’s voice. 

To win you need to be someone who would pull the trigger...

“Use your brain,” growled Keith, raising his flamethrower. “Or, rather, Lance’s brain. I’ve dreamt of making him shut up from the day we met!” That was true, at least, though Keith’s dreams usually involved much more enjoyable methods. “You won’t get away with just a burnt cheek this time!”

If the thing had access to all of Lance’s memories, it should remember how they planned to rescue Allura from Zarkon. Keith was the only one against that suicide mission.

“The others may not understand, but I was always a big picture guy,” Keith added. “Even Lance’s poor excuse of a brain should have sufficient evidence.”

Lance’s eyes become wider. His body took a step back, his hands rising in a defensive gesture. His bayard disappeared inside his armor.

“Okay,” he said in almost a teary voice. “Okay. Please don’t burn the forest!”

His lair was once again full of that grey debris, like during their first meeting on this crappy planet. Only now Keith realized it was not debris, but moths.

“I want all the bugs out of this body!”

“It’s impossible!” Lance’s head shook. “I need them for the connection! It won’t be able…”

“I’m counting to three!”

It must have shown on his face that he really won’t give them more than the count of three. (He didn’t have it in him to keep this charade longer.)

As if on command, the insects start pouring from Lance’s ears, nose, mouth. There probably wasn’t too many of them, maybe twenty or thirty total, but...

Keith couldn’t help puking this time, right inside his helmet, since he couldn’t risk removing it. Because of it, he almost missed as Lance wavered and fell in the water again. He wasn’t sitting up this time.

“Lance!” That wasn’t Keith’s crying out, that was Hunk. He appeared in the breached wall — at last.

“Lance!” And that was Allura.

“Keith, you son of a… Krolia, don’t you dare shut off the connection! His brain won’t work on its own!” This one was Pidge.

“What..?” Keith choked out.

But Pidge was already splashing through water past him. She was carrying something in her loose fist, her hand stretched away from her body. She kneeled beside Lance, lifted his body out of the water with one hand and put a moth from her palm on his forehead. Keith couldn’t see what happened after that, because Hunk’s back shielded the scene from his view.

Keith staggered back and would’ve fallen, if not for Allura supporting him.

“Are you alright?” she asked anxiously.

“I’ll survive,” he said. “Lance is… we need to get him to the base ASAP, Sea should be able to help.”

“You picked a very bad time to switch off your receiver!” he heard tears in Allura’s voice. “It’s more complicated than what it looks like.”

“Even more complicated?” It didn’t seem possible, and Keith was too tired for any of it anyway. “Let’s get back to orbit. I need painkillers. And a good cleaning up.” 

The stench of vomit in his helmet made him even more nauseous, but his stomach was already empty.

“Lance, buddy, it’s all going to be alright,” Hunk murmured, lifting Lance up.

It sounded as if Hunk didn’t trust his own reassurances.

The only thing Keith felt right now was a sense of despair — a vile, grey and decaying thing, like this whole planet.


	8. Alien coding convention

With Shiro’s assistance Coran started to prepare the healing pod as soon as he heard Keith’s urgent call for help. That’s why their one and only life-saving system was on-boars, ready and even charged from an auxiliary station’s reactor.

Tugging his moustache in worry, Coran warned them, “Alas, the power source leaves much to be desired, and I’m afraid the pod can’t be in use for a long time.”

“We’ll make do,” Keith said.

When they packed their things before blowing up the Castle, nobody had enough foresight to take a medical white suit, so Lance was laying in the pod clad in the black undersuit, because, apparently, he didn’t have any underwear. Understandable, since there are no boxers in existence that could withstand three years of constant wear and tear.

Hunk tentatively suggested that they search for Lance’s clothes in the Red Lion — there was no way he didn’t take anything with him! But he made no move towards actioning his own words.

Keith understood that only too well. He, for one, wouldn’t leave the healing pod even if towed by a Galra line cruiser.

He tried not to touch the transparent cover. The deja vu feeling was too strong and too fresh; he remembered how he was praying to something, anything, almost slamming his fists on the pod, wishing for Shiro to come out, for a cloned body to accept the real consciousness.

As if long months haven’t passed since then; as if it happened only yesterday and Keith was forced to stand guard at this stupid quiznacked healing pod forever, looking at a loved one inside.

“How is he?” asked Romelle anxiously.

She was the only one managing to stay relatively calm. Allura was silent, clinging to the transparent cover in place of Keith. Pidge was hugging Hunk (as far as her tiny hands let her) and hiding her face in his stomach. Hunk was tiredly rubbing his face, pinching his earlobes — he must be feeling nauseous. Keith knew that Lance taught him to calm his stomach that way.

“Physically he is quite alright,” Coran said at last. “He lacks a bit of magnesium, potassium… Well, that’s one thing we can remedy with ease! As for his brain…” he trailed off.

“What about it?” Hunk asked, sharply.

“Nothing good,” Coran sighed. “Usually a person’s brain activity in an altean healing pod complies with a sleep pattern. For a human or an altean it would be interchanging phases of deep and REM sleep. But Lance’s figures seem to refer to an Altean state of coma, which could be roughly the same as your human state of such. I have to admit, I’m surprised he is able to breathe by himself with this low level of brain activity.” 

Coran was looking at Lance with so much worry and sorrow, that he only previously bestowed on Allura when she spent long hours on the observation deck. It was almost as if Lance was his son. Well, Keith remembered that Coran actually paid him more attention than the other paladins — usually in the form of additional cleaning and laundry duties. 

During all the months they were looking for Lance, Coran was his usual cheerful and optimistic self. He never showed how hard it was on him, not with a single word.

Keith must have zoned out, because he blinked and suddenly Hunk was in front of him, handing him a couple of pills. Deja vu again. Although their roles had switched from the day before. 

“Painkillers and anti-nausea stuff,” he said. “You told us you had a headache. And you vomited. Was it due to a concussion or because you were grossed out?” 

“Both, it seems,” Keith swallowed the pills dry. “Thank you.”

Well, now this kind of Altean drug was far inferior to what the Blades had. Their painkillers could make you fight for an hour even with your arm (and even your head, as Krolia joked) cut off, provided you don’t bleed too much. 

Keith gave all he had left in his stash to her and Kolivan when parting ways.

Hunk shook his head, no doubt disappointed over the fact that Keith was walking around with a concussion instead of recovering in bed, but said nothing. He understood Keith couldn’t afford any kind of rest now.

“So, explain it to me in as small words as possible,” Keith said darkly. “What have I done wrong and why can’t we extract the moths just like that?”

Shiro’s heavy palm landed on his shoulder. “Keith, you don’t understand. We don’t blame you for anything. You did your best in very difficult circumstances. Avoided a hostage stand-off. But it was an impossible situation to begin with.”

“Right, you did wonders in pretending to be a soulless bastard!” Hunk agreed. “Nobody could do it better!”

“Th-thank you,” Keith stuttered, frowning.

“You moron!” Pidge pulled away from Hunk and bumped his arm with her fist. “Even I know that was an awful choice of words!”

“Sorry! I mean that Lance would never believe any of us except Keith that we are ready to kill him.”

“It was not Lance,” Keith refuted through the numbness paralyzing his thoughts. “It was a hivemind that got his memory.”

They were lucky that the hive didn’t have all the nuances of human interactions pegged down, or it wouldn’t be scared of Keith’s threats given his previous flirting (because it did notice!).

On Hunk’s face Keith’s saw an expression of utter discomfort. He was looking at Pidge, at Shiro, at Allura’s back, at Coran, still fussing at the pod, even at Romelle, avoiding Keith’s eyes at all costs. “Guys, maybe someone else should tell him? I’m afraid I’ll put my foot in my mouth again.”

“I think we need to let Sea explain,” Shiro sounded extremely tired. Keith wondered if he obeyed his order about four vargas of sleep.

Keith looked at Sea. She displayed on her screen: ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Black Paladin. While you were planetside, I managed to recuperate enough to be able to analyze the data I previously collected. I inferred that there are two types of consciousness on this planet. First one, the one you call “dragons” or “quizar-le-squeak’-els” represent the type closest to yours or ours. It implies the presence of individuality and cognitive processes using electro-chemical mediators. The main difference between us and them is that their consciousness is collective.’

“Them too?!” Hunk exclaimed.

‘I wouldn’t call the second type of consciousness, the one you call “moths” or “butterflies” a collective type. A collective is a community of individuals. The second type of consciousness is represented by a single mind, all on its own. And, as it is, it is very far from what you and I have.’

“From what we have — perhaps,” Pidge said. “But you and them are closer biologically — at least it seems so — and you are both telepaths. Don’t you have anything in common in that respect?”

‘The consciousness of the moths is so alien, that in comparison to humans, Alteans and my people have no notable distinctions between us.’

Wow, that was something. If Sea who was unable to process visual information and didn’t have speech was much closer to humans in comparison to the moths, Keith shuddered to think how _alien_ they really were.

“Ok, but what does that have to do with Lance?” Keith asked. “Why can’t we take him out of the hive’s mind?”

‘Shall I call the moths’ consciousness “hive” from now on?’

“Yes!”

‘Very well. Lance can’t be liberated from the hive’s influence because he is the hive himself.’ 

“Can you elaborate on that?” Hunk raised his hand. “How can Lance be a part of this hive it is not even chemically… I mean, if it doesn’t use synapses and stuff? Hm, I wonder how it is thinking at all — talk about grey matter!”

‘Every single organism in the hive represents a unit of information storage. Moving these organisms around and collecting the information about their death and survival, the hive makes a model of its surrounding and comes to a conclusion.’

“Ok, the same way as mycelium or an anthill on Earth,” Pidge summarized. “But how does it keep information? Earthian organism of such kind are very limited in this capacity.”

‘I don’t know how if at all it stored the data before the brain of the Red Paladin was integrated into this system. I managed to receive the signals of other hives from this planet. Their telepathic activity, despite being the same in volume, lacked in structure. My abilities were not enough to decode it. It was too alien to me or you. But the activity of the hive that occupies the area of interest is much more ordered and better understandable. It allows me to conclude that your friend’s brain may serve as an information storage and main processing hub.” 

Keith felt a chill down to his bones. “Could you dumb it down please?”

“Sea means that the hive probably hadn’t had self-awareness before it had Lance. And now it has both,” Pidge said in dead voice.

‘The Green Paladin is right. I’m sorry for excessively formal speech, I prefer to be on the safe side since I’m working with an alien information coding convention.’

Self-awareness. _It_ wanted to see stars. It wanted to deal with dragons and then, probably, leave off on its merry way to deal with other life forms in the same manner. What a thought! It could probably deal with the Galra empire too, and very efficiently at that.

To make things even bleaker, Sea added, ‘Also, the brain activity pattern of your friend is notably different from yours. I doubt he is able to support his thought processes on his own. He is a part of the hive. That’s why I cautioned you against haste actions.’

“You don’t say,” Hunk muttered. “OK, I get it, a big purge won’t work. We need to try something else. Do you have any ideas?”

Everybody looked at Sea with utmost hope. Keith briefly wondered if she was able to “see” this hope in their expressions by her eighth sense or whatever? Or did she read it in their emotional background noise?

‘I don’t,’ the pinkish sphere displayed.

***

Previously Keith had little interest in Cuba. He hardly ever thought about this tiny touristy semi-nation near the shores of Florida. He remembered vaguely (must have read it somewhere) that before the Third World War it was an enemy state of the USA, together with North Korea — it seemed that at the time America was not big on picking enemies its own size. In one of the cadet lounges there was a designer mosaic inlay of the world map; “The World United”. Somebody once covered Cuba with a red and black magnet portraying an inspirational looking guy with moustache and a flat cap above curly hair. Iverson was looking for the culprit and threatened to put them on toilet duty for “digging up historical hatred”, whatever that meant, to no results. That’s all the reference Keith had about Lance’s home country.

That’s why Keith had no idea how that Batabano Gulf looked. Was there a sand beach or a pebble one? What type of sand was it? Gold, white, pink? Or maybe it was grey and volcanic?

The dream had this beach white as clouds in the sky. And the palms — there should be palms, shouldn’t there? — were green and bright as desert grass after a rain.

Foamy tide was tickling Keith’s heels, Juventud Island was looming like a pack of dark clouds over the horizon, with lightning flashes above the top, but the storm was still far away. Here, on the beach, it was calm and safe and nice.

Here Lance was walking alongside him.

He was wearing the same blue swim trunks Keith saw during their disastrous swimming pool visit (later Coran showed them how to ascend to it properly, and they made it a team building exercise for the six of them, including Allura). But right now Lance didn’t carry a towel, and his cheekbones and clavicles were dotted with white spray of drying salt.

Keith wanted to lick this salt up, and he realized that he could. It was a dream.

He grabbed Lance’s hand, meaning to pull him closer, but he was too late: Lance had already made the same maneuver. Keith lost his balance, tried to find it again thrusting his free hand out like a balance beam, but couldn’t, and both of them fell on the sand, that felt soft and very fine, almost as if there was no sand at all. No hard landing, no burning sensation.

“Here you are…” Lance whispered.

He was laying on his back, on the edge of lapping waves. White foam was adorning his hair, reminding Keith of a squirming something he didn’t care to remember. Keith was on all fours above him, his fingers buried in the wet sand.

Keith brought his palm out, made a motion to tuck away a lock of hair on Lance’s brow, but hesitated — his hand was sullied by sand.

But Lance simply took his hand and pressed it against his cheek.

Keith did clear away that hair, and also caressed Lance’s face, from his temple to the corner of his mouth.

Lance smiled, showing white teeth that glistened behind chapped lips encrusted with salt.

And just like that, Keith could no longer hold back.

Keith clung to Lance desperately, grabbed him almost violently. He kissed him awkwardly, aggressively, tenderly; he couldn’t decide if it was OK to use his tongue or not. Lance took initiative from him almost immediately, and, when he bit Keith’s lip, his heart skipped beats. He would’ve never imagined Lance going for it!

They rolled around like in the movies and Keith thought it was stupid and unrealistic, they were bound to have sand everywhere, but he didn’t care when Lance was holding his face in his palms, caressing his shoulders, carding his fingers through his hair, as if he was as touch-starved as Keith himself and he needed that contact, and he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop...

“Lance, Lance, wait a second,” somehow, Keith managed to pull back a little. “There is a storm coming. Lightning… we need to find a shelter…”

“We have time enough,” Lance was sucking the skin on his neck greedily. “Just let me…”

He moved lower, and Keith gasped feeling his fingers beneath the waistband of his trunks. Was he going to… Yes!

Keith woke up, aroused, ashamed of himself because of it and vaguely terrified.

He was never going to take Coran’s sleeping aids again!

What a miserable wreck he was, enjoying dream porn, when Lance was in the healing pod, Coran and Allura were analyzing his data trying to understand how to help him, Hunk and Pidge were trying to remember anything vaguely medical they knew, and Sea was teaching them on the nature of telepathy. That left him, Shiro and Romelle quite useless, but they also did what they could. One of the other two were monitoring the planet on screens right now — freshly awake, Keith couldn’t remember whose turn it was. He needed to go and relieve them...

Instead, Keith rolled onto his stomach, bit a corner of his pillow and rubbed his crotch on the cot, once, twice, three times.

Wolf who was laying on Keith’s legs tossed and turned, but didn’t wake up.

_Shame on me. It’s like wanking to a friend’s photo while they’re unaware. Even worse. Because right now Lance is..._

With a choked moan, Keith came, feeling weak and pathetic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sympathize with Sea: when I translate into English, I also feel as if I'm using an alien coding convention ;) I think bilingual guys here know what I mean! :)))


	9. Empty, cold, lonely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, from this chapter on I start to add more little tweaks and change things here and there. I just can't help myself if I see obvious things that I can do better now! (After all, the original was written a year ago; that's the perk of translating something you wrote yourself). If you have read the Russian version (or google translated it to know how the story ended), you probably won't find anything too surprising, just little scenes added for coherency, maybe some parts of dialogue would be changed to better fit into the narration. If you haven't read the Russian version, it doesn't really matter, right? :D 
> 
> A lot of thanks to crumbcake for helping me flesh it out and being generally amazing!

Keith hoped that Coran would just mull it over, rake through his bottomless memory, then twirl his moustache and say that everything was going to be alright. They’d just need to go to some godforsaken planet, or to a space pirates infested market, or to a black hole, where there’d be a giant beast with special healing abilities, or a wise ancient hermit knowing a secret recipe, or flowers with magical pollen to make an elixir... In short, a ready-made solution, which they’d get, possibly at the very end of the universe, probably fighting, definitely sweating — something like the way they have done with yelmors and phonatonium. 

And after an undetermined amount of running around, and yelling, and battling some type of boss, they’ll save Lance.

But during the five vargas Keith was sleeping (and dreaming) Coran invented something surprisingly mundane. And the Altean obviously didn’t like the solution he found, otherwise he wouldn’t look like his two hundred plus decaphoebs suddenly caught up with him all at once.

“I was able to synthesise a cure with what I had on hand,” Coran said, uncharacteristically subdued. “My pop-pop’s first aid kit is full of fascinating things, I say! The resulting concoction is a pretty strong mind-altering drug… and I’m not sure how it would alter the chemistry of your primitive brain.”

Paladins and Shiro exchanged dry looks. Allura averted her eyes.

“What is the worst case scenario?” Shiro asked.

He made Lance’s wellbeing his personal duty. Being the highest ranking officer, he probably had to, according to the Earth’s laws. Not that the Earth’s laws meant anything now, but Keith was extremely grateful to Shiro for that. If he, as an acting Black Paladin, had to make medical decisions on Lance’s behalf, it would probably break him.

“The drug’s effect on the brain will be so strong that the telepathic waves from the moths’s hive will resonate with the telepathic field of the Lions, irreversibly changing the structure of space-time continuum and resulting in the formation of a black hole where this very planet used to be, with us being its first casualty,” Coran answered immediately. Seeing the others’ faces, he added defensively, “You asked about the worst case scenario, not the most realistically pessimistic one!”

“Ok, very epic try at lightening the mood,” Hunk said darkly. “Now, please tell us the worst possible scenario.”

“An unpredictable allergic reaction with lethal outcome,” the answer was just as quick. “He is not allergic to any individual component of the drug, but I can’t be sure about the combination!”

“Setting allergies aside, could this pill drag him deeper into a coma?” asked Pidge.

“It’s not a pill, it’s a shot. It shouldn’t have such an effect,” Coran shrugged. “But I can’t be absolutely certain. I’m sorry, my girl. I’m not a medical scientist, I just dabble in many things… Not enough things.” His moustache drooped sadly.

“Coran also prepared an antidote,” Allura tried to put some of their worries to rest. “We will closely monitor all of Lance’s medical data. If something goes wrong, we will inject it immediately.”

Shiro crossed his arms. “Earth doctors follow the rule ‘do no harm’. We cannot use untried methods on Lance.”

“No!” Pidge and Keith exclaimed together.

“We don’t have time for a medical trial, Shiro!” Pidge added.

“No,” Hunk agreed. “He’d ask us to risk it. If he were conscious, I mean.”

“What other choice do we have?” Keith argued. “Give him back to the moths? How is that no harm?! They are using him like a weapon! Without his helmet, with cracked useless armor! Against live flamethrowers! And we’re a year away from Earth! Do you think he’ll still be alive when we return here with a team of real medical researchers? And even if he is somehow still breathing, are you sure we’ll get the real him back? The same bluff won’t work twice!”

“No, Keith,” Shiro pinched the crease between his brows. “I was suggesting that we don’t commit to a potentially dangerous treatment, but take Lance to Earth in the cryopod.”

“We don’t know what will happen to him when he is far away from the hive,” Allura said.

“And we don’t know how long the pod will work with this power source,” Coran added. “I’m afraid it needs a lot of maintenance that I simply cannot provide here!”

Sea’s sphere vibrated stronger, and everybody looked at her. ‘May I remind my esteemed allies,’ she texted, ‘that while the hive is amplifying the natural telepathic signals of the Red Paladin, my planet is enduring the worst crisis within the recent three hundred decaphoebs.’

“Then, I suppose, we don’t have much choice, and the risk is justified,” Shiro sighed. “OK, Coran, do it.”

***

The shot didn’t take effect straight away.

Lance was still in the cryopod with his face surprisingly calm and relaxed.

Coran said he couldn’t predict how long it will take for the drug to work so everybody should go rest for a while. But, considering the embarrassment that the previous “rest” ended in, Keith didn’t want to go visit his makeshift cot in the Black lion’s hull just yet.

Besides, his head was still pounding. Not with that awful sharp migraine, just a dull persistent ache. Keith knew his body and knew sleep wouldn’t do him any good right now. 

So he asked Wolf to take him into the Green’s storage unit to visit Kaltenecker.

Keith’s father didn’t keep any animals larger than chickens, but at the neighboring farm they had cows. Keith got used to the smell of manure and learnt his away around taking care of animals. When Lance disappeared, he and Hunk became farm boys together, though the cow was kept in the Green and Yellow lions (something about Black disliking her).

Kaltenecker stopped milking even before Keith came back from the Blades. Now she was a bit anxious. Maybe she was in heat or just missing Lance. Keith was told that cows were clever, though personally he didn’t give them much credit.

But, anxious as she was, Kaltenecker’s proximity calmed him. She was warm and she smelled like Earth. Well, like one of Earth’s scents, anyway. Not the best one, but unmistakably alive. Keith suspected that was the reason Lance never tried to skip his “farm duty”, even though he always whined and tried to wiggle out of everything else. Maybe he’d be glad that Keith took it upon himself now.

Keith suddenly realized Lance probably didn’t know that Keith grew up on a farm, even though his father didn’t bother to do anything productive with it. Keith never told anybody except Shiro, and Shiro was unlikely to gossip.

It was a bit disconcerting. Keith was always thinking about that idiot lately; but Lance probably forgot all about Keith while under the moths’ control…

No, he didn’t. The caterpillars showed them his dreams, and those dreams were about Keith, not about anyone else.

Here, in the quiet place near warm Katlenecker who was chewing on alien dry grass and emitting the unmistakable methane aroma, Keith for the first time in forever gave himself permission to think over the implications.

It was quite possible that Lance returned his feelings.

Or, it was also possible that during his one-sided rivalry with Keith he accidentally put Keith on a pedestal. When Keith was fourteen, he did something like that with Shiro. They had a lengthy talk about it, one Keith was still extremely embarrassed about.

The possibility of Lance’s liking (loving?) him back made Keith achingly hopeful. It was a weird but bright feeling, a sharp contrast to all this swampy devastation.

Although, mutual feelings wouldn’t matter if they didn’t heal Lance.

Maybe it was even worse that way. Now Keith would always wonder what could have happened if he had got his act together and kissed Lance — it would have been perfect on that day the idiot came to his quarters to tell him he was going to resign from Voltron to free his spot for Shiro or Allura. Or later, right before Keith left for the Blades, when he was once again late for some stupid PR mission, and Lance ambushed him in the hall and yelled at him… Or, at the very beginning, when the Castle went mad and Keith saved Lance from an open airlock… Wait, no, that would be too far back, Keith didn’t have any feelings for Lance then, except maybe growing irritation. Or did he? It was hard to tell now.

Anyway, he had plenty of opportunities — and he wouldn’t have them anymore. Even if Lance woke up, and became himself, it was highly unlikely he’d be up to any romance in the foreseeable future, after everything he had gone through. And he would be up to dealing with Keith even less, after everything Keith had said to him in the “evil lair”. Keith would definitely have trust issues if he were him.

But...

Wolf, who was up to this moment peacefully sleeping on the bail of hay, suddenly sprang up, wide awake. He came up to Keith and looked into his eyes.

“I’m not giving up,” Keith said softly. “There is still hope, right? It’s just… It’s easier not to expect anything. This way you’re not setting yourself up to disappointment.”

“Is disappointment the word for it?” Wolf seemed to be inquiring without words. “For Shiro, you were ready to fight till your last breath!”

Well, of course Keith knew he was projecting and that the Wolf didn’t understand the situation at all. He just felt Keith’s inner turmoil and tried to support him as best as he could. Looking at Wolf, Keith was seeing his own guilty consciousness.

He believed in Shiro, because even the idea of giving up on him made everything pointless.

But he didn’t dare hope for Lance being completely OK, because it meant… it meant, that Keith would have to sort out his feelings after all, with a slim chance for a happy ending. But the thing was that, after meeting Krolia, Keith had just started to get used to the idea that he was not necessarily destined to a quick and lonely death, sacrificing himself for the greater good; that maybe the universe had something in stock for him. It was a new outlook in life that needed a lot of adjustments.

The earpiece in his helmet came to life, when Coran said, “Keith! Lance is waking up!”

“On my way!”

Before Keith finished talking, Wolf nestled to his side and teleported him to the bridge of the orbital station.

***

If Lance were to look into a mirror right then, he’d have a fit and demand all of his precious creams and moisturizers (they were all safely in Red, Keith checked.)

Down on the swamp Lance looked healthy and fit, but during the several vargas he spent in the healing pod his face got thinner, his skin became grayish, dark circles spread around his eyes, and sweat beaded on his brow. The sight made Keith clench his fists.

Look at what these fucking bugs did to him!

Keith thought for a wild second, _If I could burn this hive down on the spot, I’d do it. And I wouldn’t give a fuck about anything and anybody else on this planet._

His own ferociousness scared him. Wasn’t it how galra started things? Wasn’t it how Zarkon became a monster?

But he didn’t have time to spare on self-reflection, since Lance was slowly coming to, in perfect accordance with Coran’s predictions. Lance’s eyelids were trembling, he was frowning in his dream. Coran already had him out of the pod and on what they jokingly called “an operation table” — a narrow medical cot that was usually kept in the Blue Lion's store room. Coran usually sat paladins on it while dotting their scratches with medical glue.

At last, Lance’s eyes flew open. Wide, dilated pupils were struggling to focus. “K-keith?” he muttered. “Shiro..? Pidge..? It can’t be…”

“Hey, Lance!” Hunk, who was staying behind the head of the cot, leaned forward so that his friend could see him. “Do you remember what happened?”

Lance frowned, as if putting together thoughts that didn’t fit right. “We were on the beach… There was a storm coming…”

Keith felt cold sweat breaking out on his back.

Could it be...

Suddenly Lance blinked several times, then shut his eyes for a second. “But where is everybody?”

“Everybody is here, Lance,” Shiro said gently. “We are all alive, thanks to you. You made it, you pressed that button and saved us all.”

Something darkened in Lance’s face. “I saved all of you? Everybody? Why am I alone then… I can’t… it’s not supposed to be like that… where have you gone to…” he muttered something in Spanish, sat up, and pulled his knees closer to his chest. Hunk replied in the same language, but Lance didn’t answer, just curled tighter. “Stop that!” he moaned quietly, unhappily.

“Lance, my boy, what do we need to stop?” Coran put his hand on his shoulder.

Lance cried out, shrugged his hand off, and rolled down from the cot. It looked as if he tried to jump, but his legs didn’t quite follow.

Pidge moved to help him, but he shoved her away — fortunately, very weakly — and hugged his own shoulders. After that, he dashed forward, but hit the wall of the bridge. He turned around and pressed his back into it as if trying to hide.

“Lance, calm down!” Shiro lifted his only hand above his head showing he had no weapons. “Do you remember us? Do you understand who we are?”

Lance nodded.

“We would never hurt you,” Shiro took a step forward.

“Keep away!” Lance thundered. “You are not Shiro!”

Shiro paused.

“Lance, this is the real Shiro,” Allura walked around Shiro’s broad figure. “We downloaded his personality into the clone’s body. You weren’t with us at that moment.”

“No!” Lance desperately shook his head. “Who are you… why are you… take off those faces! Please don’t do this..!”

His gaze was jumping around the room, not focusing on anything, until it landed on Keith. His eyes grew wider. “You were there!” he shouted. “You… you, Keith, are you real?”

Keith choked on his words. He didn’t know what to do. Before, during the battle with the moths, he refused to think about his adversary as Lance; no, he told himself, it was a cruel creature occupying his body, foreign to everything human and sane. And now he saw Lance who was seemingly free from influence, shrieking, whining, shivering, like a tortured animal in a cage. The previous evil version seemed closer to the person Lance was supposed to be. 

Lance shoved off the wall with a surprisingly strong push and took several wobbling steps to the cot, where he almost collided with Keith. He tried to grasp the armor on his chest, didn’t find a purchase, and slid down Keith’s body (not the way Keith had imagined it!), landing on his knees. It took Keith several precious moments to gather his wits — everybody else was staring in shock too — but he finally lifted Lance and sat him on the cot. Lance was very hot and heavy in his arms.

“Keith, you’re the real deal, you hate me as you’re supposed to,” Lance chanted quietly, quickly. “Please, take me back there to my family, don’t torture me, please, what do you need me for, you have Romelle…” (“What do I have to do with it?” Romelle asked in the background, puzzled.) “Please, Keith, you’re kind, I know it, please…”

No, this wasn’t Lance. Lance wouldn’t beg hysterically, wouldn’t grasp Keith’s hands tight enough to leave bruises. He could fool around, he could even embarrass himself, but he never groveled. Except jokingly. (“Pidgey-Pidgeon, please make me a cool extension for my bayard to make sparks! Pretty-pretty-pretty please with the cherry on top, you know you love me!”)

Keith was staked in the gut by hatred, molten-hot and knife-sharp. He wanted to shake this pathetic idiot, maybe even hit him — make his survival instinct kick in, make him defend himself, make him abandon this stupid farce! Because it was some kind of game the moths were playing, Keith was sure. “What family do you want to return to?”

“To my family there on the planet, please, Keith, you’re a kind person, please, it’s almost no effort for you at all, really…”

“They are fucking insects, Lance! They are not your family!”

At this very moment Lance’s rapid eye movement stopped for the first time, and Keith could really look at him. Lance’s eyes were red with broken blood vessels. “It’s empty without them,” he whispered. “There is nothing else. And you’re not here.”

“We are here!” Keith gave in to the desire to shake his shoulders. “We are right here, we came for you! Snap out of it, Lance, come on!”

Lance blinked. “You are not Keith,” he muttered, trying to shake Keith’s hands off. It was a futile effort, with Keith being so much stronger at the moment. “No-no-no, you’re not him either… please… it’s empty… and cold…”

Lance started crying with big fat tears, like a small child, with total abandon, not even trying to wipe off snot, choking on his own sobs and drooling. The Paladins were just standing around the cot, numb and frozen to the spot.

“It will get better, my boy!” said Coran at last, almost like he was praying.

It didn’t.

***

Eventually, even Keith’s steadfast belief that they were doing the right thing started to crack. 

Lance curled up in a corner shivering and whining, unresponsive to their attempts at drawing out the friend they once knew. Shiro joined him and offered firm reassuring encouragement. Allura did the same with gentle tenderness. But Lance just curled tighter and muttered something unintelligible; half-English half-Spanish gibberish no one could hope to decipher.

Hunk tried as well, his words painfully chipper and optimistic; all the while Lance sobbed into his arms and pleaded for him to stop without ever looking up. Pidge tried to goad the real Lance out and instead he pissed himself for her troubles, seemingly without noticing. She resorted to pleas which incidentally tore at Keith’s heart and brought Hunk to tears.

When it was Keith’s turn again, he tried everything he could think of. He swore, he bargained, he tried to invoke that old and tired sense of rivalry. Unfortunately, Lance quit responding altogether. Even his cries died down, his body relaxed unnaturally, his gaze faded, unseeing. All in the span of hours, he fell into a twilight state.

Coran’s sensors showed he was severely dehydrated and that the stress levels for his body were enormous, close to a state of shock.

“We don’t have much choice, do we?” Shiro asked ruefully, looking at Lance’s prone form. 

“We are not giving him back to the hive!” Keith almost growled at him.

“Nobody suggests that,” Allura shook her head. “But I’m afraid, we will need to work with the problem from the other end. Maybe the hive is better placed to free him, maybe he can’t do it without their cooperation. Coran, I think it’s better to use the antidote now. We tortured Lance enough as it is.”

That word, “tortured”, did it. Keith didn’t protest when Coran pressed the pneumatic syringe with the antidote to Lance’s neck.


	10. Negotiations with terrorists

If it was up to Keith, he would never return to the swamp. But Allura insisted, and Hunk agreed with her.

“My vote’s for diplomacy,” he said. “This might be a case of attracting bees with honey. Uhhh, space moths with honey? I mean maybe if we can find out what these moths want with Lance and then give that to them then they’ll let him go. ”

“Yeah, how is that gonna work since what they want is world domination!” Pidge said.

Keith was with her on that, but Hunk didn’t budge. “Pidge, you read too much dark sci-fi!”

“And you read too much _Ender’s Game_! It’s not a cultural misunderstanding with the buggers! They really captured one of us, they took away his free will!”

Hunk sighed. “I bet they don’t understand free will the way we do. Remember that they’re totally different from us. We could be looking at this completely wrong. What I got from Lance’s words... “ his voice trembled, “what I got, was that he was kind of chilling out in that telepathic connection with the hive! Besides, he told Keith they healed him when he crash-landed in the jungles. Maybe they are not so bad after all.”

“They also told Keith they want to spread across the stars,” Pidge reminded. “I don’t know about you, but to me it screams evil!”

“They told Keith they want to _see_ the stars,” Allura clarified. “Maybe that’s just what they meant. Regardless, that’s the only option I see left.”

“Just because we don’t like an idea doesn’t mean it’s not valid. We’ll try anything within our means that doesn’t harm Lance.” Keith said what any reasonable leader should say in a situation like this. “We won’t meet their demands if we don’t like them.”

“Let’s just find out what demands they have, for a start,” said Hunk.

“And try not to become a part of hive in the process,” Shiro added. “They definitely tried to capture Keith. Speaking of, how’s your head, Keith?”

“Better,” Keith lied.

Well, it was not a complete lie. The headache was not pounding anymore, just buzzing in his temples. His head overall felt tight with pressure like a hot air balloon.

But it was one thing to decide they needed to negotiate with the moths and a completely different matter to decide how to proceed. First of all, they didn’t even know if the moths could talk to them.

“Maybe the swarm can spell out letters for us, the same way Sea does?” Hunk asked. “They should know English, because Lance knows it!”

“Sea has her own reasons to communicate with us. They don’t.” Keith argued.

“How do you know that?”

‘I think I can help you,’ Sea entered the conversation. ‘As I’ve already told you, the emittance of the hive that integrated the Red Paladin better resembles thought patterns of a sentient being like you or me, than the emittance of other hives. Now, when the Red Paladin is again unconscious, I believe the telepathic shock won’t be as devastating for me when I lower my shields. I could try to decipher their answers to your questions.”

“Do you know for sure that the telepathic shock won’t be as bad or you just hope so? ” asked Shiro sincerely. 

He already treated the caterpillar as a part of the team. Keith should treat her like that too, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care about her the same as he would for anyone else. Something about her was holding him back, maybe it was his mild insectophobia and prejudice.

‘I’m not sure. The hypothesis requires an experiment.’

“Experiment away!” Keith ordered.

Sea’s sphere changed color once more for a brief instant. When the pinkish shade returned, she relayed that the emittance was still incredibly strong, but much less so, and that she was now able to withstand it for short amounts of time.

“Is it possible to chat with them from orbit, if you can feel them here?” asked Hunk.

“We need someone to ask questions,” Keith said, trying to suppress his irritation. “Do you see a single moth here?”

“Well, there is at least one moth inside of Lance,” mused Pidge. “We could take him out of a cryopod and let that moth procreate enough to strengthen his connection with the hive again, then let the hive use him as a mouthpiece.”

Everybody looked at Lance, still motionless in the pod. Keith shuddered, remembering their interactions on the planet. To let those things capture him again — no! He’d rather be captured himself.

“Or we could go down, ask the hive and try to understand their answers,” Allura concluded firmly.

She probably had the same thoughts as Keith.

So that’s what they decided to do.

***

The surface of the planet hadn’t changed in the past day-night cycle. It was still grey, humid and hot down there. The jungle was still like two walls at both banks of the river, but now Keith seemed to sense something unmistakably hostile, as if a wary animal was watching him from the bushes.

Well, at least he didn’t feel as if he was targeted by crosshairs, with someone’s finger happy on the trigger. Rather a very heavy, very attentive gaze kept watch. As if someone was letting them into their territory, but ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

To keep things simple they decided to take the same route they used the day before yesterday. It was familiar and they had already dealt with any obstacles, they wouldn’t have to hack their way through the undergrowth again.

Alas, when they landed on the familiar hill, they couldn’t find the path they took; everything was overgrown again.

“It’s worse than the Amazon,” Hunk panted. This time he moved ahead, blasting the vegetation with fire from his big gun.

They couldn’t get away with simply cutting it now: they had to make way for Sea’s sphere. She made it a bit smaller when they reached the planet, but it couldn’t be smaller than her anti-gravity platform.

“Have you been to the Amazon?” Pidge asked.

“No, but I have a good imagination!”

“Are those fanged butterflies of yours in the Amazon?” asked Romelle.

“And flying alligators, too, ” Pidge confirmed casually. “Cuties.”

Hunk snorted.

Their party was smaller this time: apart from Sea, only Pidge, Hunk and Keith. Allura was patrolling in Blue on low orbit ready to come to their rescue, if necessary. She initially wanted to land too, leaving Pidge on guard duty, but Pidge protested that she was left out.

This time when they embarked upon the shore, the moths didn’t rise like a cloud from under their feet. They hardly bothered them at all. Very seldom could Keith notice light grey wings, almost indistinguishable among the grey trunks and greyish green leaves — or he thought he noticed them, anyway.

At last they reached the narrow clearing where Lance tried to shoot Allura. Keith was surprised to find out they made that clearing larger by bringing down several trees. He was so engrossed in fighting he didn’t even notice. The deep singe marks on the tree trunks were still there, and it looked as if they won’t heal soon.

“Now what?” asked Pidge. “Can anyone think of something?”

Keith certainly had no ideas. He was sure that the moths would reveal themselves by this point, possibly by attacking them again. But he never saw so much as a single shiver of wings among the leaves.

Suddenly they heard a gentle whisper in the silent jungle that made Keith’s hair stand on end, “Perhaps I will be able to follow the signal through my protection shield.”

Keith’s bayard jumped into his hand seemingly by itself; Hunk’s and Pidges’s reflexes worked the same way.

But even before he finished his sharp turn with the sword drawn out, Keith realized he was too quick to assume the worst and that it was Sea talking.

“I’m sorry,” her words were still shown as a text on screen. “I was at long last able to set up seamless voicing. I can’t hear any discrepancies with human speech, but if there are any, please don’t hesitate to correct me.” 

“It’s OK,” it was hard for Keith to lower his sword. “Just warn us next time.”

“Sorry again, I haven’t thought about it.”

Sea’s voice was very soft, almost childish. She sounded like a very young bubbly girl who wears only pink, undertakes an apprenticeship at a local confectionary and volunteers at a pet shelter.

“The signal is unsteady in this part of the forest,” Sea continued. “Even through my shields I can tell that most of the activity is happening not very far from here. Perhaps, all the moths are hiding there. I could lead you to that point.” 

“Is that necessary?” Hunk asked doubtfully. “I don’t really want to meet them in their lair. Why can’t we ask our questions here?”

“Seconded,” Pidge said. “Just because we don’t see the moths doesn’t mean that they are not here.”

“I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to decipher the answers,” Sea’s voice box was so good it even sounded apologetic. “I’m afraid I'll have to be close to them for decoding.”

“But last time the signal was so strong it knocked you down!” Hunk’s eyes narrowed. “And now you tell us you need to be closer!”

“The signal was strong, yes, but it lacked nuances. You’re thinking about telepathy as if it were a sound that could suppress other sounds and cause deafness. But it’s better to think about it like it’s a multi-colored painting where you need to come closer to see distinct brush strokes.”

“Wow, Cee-Cee!” Now Hunk sounded admiring rather that suspicious. “You look like a Cee-Cee. May I call you Cee-Cee? It sounds way friendlier. You actually learnt how to use visual metaphors! That’s so cool!”

“I had good teachers,” Sea answered almost coyly. “And I’d be honored to be called by a friendly nickname.”

“Ok,” Keith summarized, “let’s get to that core of activity. Keep your bayards ready. Sea, you keep in the middle. Everyone else, if something happens, we protect the civilian.”

“Yes, sir!” Hunk and Pidge chorused. Keith wasn’t sure if they were making fun of him or not.

***

Keith half expected them to climb down more hollowed roots to another secret lair like the one Lance set up for himself. But the moths’ activity core was open-air. And it looked like...

“Damn…” Hunk muttered. “I’d never thought they’d build a Stonehenge!”

“It’s more like a nightmarish egg clutch,” Pidge argued.

Keith felt a cold shiver run down his back. The view resembled Stonehenge only marginally, but he understood why Hunk put it like that. It also had very little in common with a clutch of eggs. Keith didn’t expect anything of the sort, and if you don’t expect something, you’re either frightened or amused by it. There was nothing here that could be considered amusing.

The “activity core” was situated on the big natural clearing — the first one Keith saw that didn’t have a canopy of trees above. Because of that he was sure it was created, and maintained artificially.

In the center of the clearing there was a strange form, globe-shape and protruding, with an indentation in its side. Keith thought that it looked like an egg with a fracturing shell, if your imagination was active enough. He had no idea what it used to be originally, though the silhouette and size of it looked vaguely familiar. It was enveloped by multicolored slithering masses that was coated with straps of white webbing.

Having a closer look, Keith realized that multicolored mass was a great cloud of moths, almost exactly the same they had dealt with before, only with various wing colors. The most prominent ones were red and blue. And what he thought to be white webbing were actually the loose swarms of already familiar light-grey bugs. The buzz was palpable; they wouldn’t be able to hear each other if not for their helmets.

Around the formation there was a circle of similar shapes, although fragmented and in various stages of ruin, that probably reminded Pidge of egg shards. They were also besieged by moths, although any semblance of pattern or order was lacking. Some of the things were completely covered by several layers of those new colourful insects, others were almost free, but caked with mud and dirt.

Pidge gasped. “It’s Lance’s safety pod!”

Yep, Keith realized with a sinking feeling. That’s exactly what it was. The thing in the center was the main chamber — or, rather, what was left of it. It was surrounded by many pieces of the outer safety layer that the capsule shed on impact.

“No way!” Hunk protested. “Those pieces are way too big for pod shards! t Whatever it is, it hit the ground hard, look at how it got crushed! There is no way Lance could’ve survived something like that! ” But his protests were full of horrified realization.

Keith took a deep breath and tried not to imagine Lance's broken body laying prone, dying. _Well_ , he reasoned, _at least that thing didn’t lie when it said it healed Lance._

“Ok,” Pidge said. “Ok, guys, let’s not freak out. We knew Lance was super not OK here. Now we just saw concrete proof of that. Just… you know, think of it as hard evidence. That’s all.”

“Yeah,” said Hunk heavy and firm. “And maybe, like I said, it means the moths are not too bad?”

“Well, I don’t know about that… Hey, look! Do you see what this is?” she shouted.

“What should I see exactly?” Hunk asked.

“Look at all this activity! Doesn’t it resemble anything to you?”

Keith was almost hurting his eyes, straining to find something useful in this awful mess. He got it that they used Lance’s broken pod to construct… something. A headquarters? A social circle? He didn’t know and, unlike Hunk, he didn’t think it made them less their enemy.

But her did see some kind of pattern to the activity. Every large piece was connected with the central hull piece by a chain of moths flying for and aft. Maybe they were carrying something small, although Keith couldn’t see anything. There were probably billions of moths on this little piece of land alone. 

“It’s...” Hunk said hesitantly and almost admiringly. “It’s their brain! Literally their brain!”

“Exactly! They imitate nerve impulses! Look, this one looks like a ganglion, and these look like axons!” Pidge’s cheer grated on Keith’s nerves.

He had a feeling that Lance would’ve cut Hunk and Pidge short and asked them to explain in English. But Lance wasn’t here, and surprisingly it was Sea that asked for clarification. “Are you saying that these construction imitates the workings of human central nervous system?”

“Only the principle scheme,” Pidge made a gesture as if she wanted to adjust her glasses but aborted it remembering she was wearing her helmet. “Guys, what if… what if the moths kind of arranged this thing to replace Lance? He was the main processing hub, so they needed something in his stead…”

“No,” Hunk argued. “They couldn’t do it all at once, like, yesterday. Do you see there are different kinds of moths? Lance… well, in his lair he did experiments on them, nurtured different breeds. It’s not a kind of work you do overnight. He has been preparing this brain for a long time.”

“Who do you mean by that ‘he’?” Keith asked sharply.

Hunk didn’t answer.

Meanwhile, Keith was sure the buzzing sound became louder by the second. Or maybe he was just imagining it. The moths didn’t pay any attention to the paladins, but they had no idea what processes may be unfolding inside that mysterious brain.

“I’ll signal our readiness to communicate,” Sea suggested. “For that I’ll lower my shield for a very short time. It should be enough. If I feel ill again, please evacuate me to the station without delay.”

“Don’t worry, Cee-Cee. We got you,” said Hunk somberly.

The pinkish glow of her sphere became duller. The body of the giant caterpillar started to tremble, and shortly the glow became brighter again.

“It is listening to our conversation and is trying to understand,” Sea said. “Ask it, and it’ll answer. Only, I’m afraid, I won’t have enough strength for many questions. Only two, maybe three. Please try to ask only things of the utmost importance.”

The three paladins looked at each other.

“We want to free Lance of its influence without hurting him. He needs to be alright.” said Keith. “What do they want in exchange?”

“Please define alright.”

“We want him to be the way he was.”

“Can humans really be the way they were?” Sea inquired with polite surprise. “None of my people has ever managed that feat.”

“This is an interesting philosophical question,” Hunk perked up. “Some people say that people change constantly, while others would argue that they never really change…”

“We don’t have time for that!” Thank god Pidge was first to say that, or Keith would’ve snapped again. “Sea, let’s put it this way: how can we free Lance from the psychological influence of the hive and return him to an optimal human mental state? Is that clear enough?”

Instead of answering, Sea weakened her shielding again.

In a second the pinkish glow was back.

“So quick…” Hunk muttered.

“Thought is quicker than words,” Sea replied. “I received the whole package of information. But the hive couldn’t answer your question.”

Subconsciously Keith lifted his bayard.

“It’s not that it didn’t want to answer, it couldn’t,” Sea continued. “Although it finds it unpleasant to answer questions under threat of destruction, as much as it is capable of feeling emotions. It can’t answer because it doesn’t understand the question. From its point of view, it can’t bring Lance out of its influence because he is a part of the hive. It’s the same as if you requested to ‘free’ your limb from your influence.”

“But our limbs were born with us, and it captured Lance!” Pidge argued hotly.

“That may mean the same thing for them,” said Hunk. “Maybe, they capture parts of other hives all the time.”

“So it can’t stop controlling Lance?” Keith clenched his teeth.

“It has never done something like that before,” Sea confirmed. “It doesn’t know how.”

“Can we offer it something in exchange? To motivate it to at least try?” Pidge was grasping at straws, Keith heard it in her voice.

“According to what I could decode…” Sea paused. “It said the part of it that used to be Lance was very ill when it joined them. His body was broken, and his inner core… how should I put it? His soul? It was broken too. I can’t make it clearer than that.”

“We got it,” Keith cut her linguistic struggle short. “What else?”

“It told me he was a precious and bright particle. That he lost his hive and he would die, if it hadn’t made him a part of it. That it took better care of him than his previous hive. That with it he was satisfied. That if you want to do right by your friend, you should returh him to the hive, because for it he was the center and the essence.”

“What?!” asked Pidge incredulously.

“I think the hive is trying to say it loves him and we don’t,” Hunk sighed.

Keith didn’t know if it was time to laugh or to take out his flamethrower. So the hive loved Lance. Get in line!

“Ask it,” he said to Sea, “why was it using Lance to fight dragons if it valued him so much?”

“Is it an important question?” Sea asked. “Will it help you to get the Red Paladin back?”

Pidge and Hunk were silent. Keith breathed out. “We don’t have a better question. Ask.”

The pinkish glow dulled and brightened again.

Sea’s thick gelatinous body was trembling. “It says that the precious and bright particle brought the desire, the intention and the possibility to extinguish dragons. That his beautiful fiery hate ignited the hive.”

“The war was Lance’s idea?!” Hunk roared. “It can’t be! I’ll never believe it!”

“So it says.”

The paladins exchanged looks.

“What if Lance really went mad?” Pidge whispered. “And it created a chain reaction? And now the whole planet is crazy because of him?”

Keith remembered his one introspection with Wolf and Kaltenecker. Maybe giving up is an option after all. Some battles are better not to pick, if you don’t want to lose the war.

His headache grew so much worse that he got scared for a second he was going crazy too.

“No,” he hit his palm with his fist. “Lance didn’t lose it. He was healthy when we fought Lotor. When the hive says his soul was broken, it means he was homesick or something of that sort. We will get the real him back, no matter what. That’s the goal. Stay focused.”

“It’s possible I know how to free him now,” Sea chirped.


	11. Insectophobia

Sea’s plan was definitely well-thought out; it even had a good possibility to actually work. But Keith didn’t like it one bit.

He couldn’t fathom letting the caterpillar muck around in Lance’s brain after the damned moths wrecked it three ways to Sunday!

Call him a xenophobe, accuse him of not trusting his allies — whatever you want! Keith plainly despised the idea.

But he didn’t see another solution, either. The healing pod was on its last dregs, back on Doomgloom the caterpillars were still severely depressed, they were running out of time. But, the more he thought about it, the more Keith had to remind himself these all were valid considerations. As the Black Paladin, as the leader of the greatest fighting force in the Universe, he didn’t have a right to screw everyone else, plaster himself to Lance’s side and growl “Mine! Don’t touch!” at anyone who’d try to pry his hands from him. And even if he could, it wouldn’t help Lance one bit.

He knew it made sense and that there were no other options but it didn't make it any easier to go with Sea's plan!

They returned to the station, they prepared everything for this attempt, but Keith kept having second thoughts.

The plan Sea suggested was like this.

According to her, if Doomgloom received artificially boosted telepathic signals from Lance and Lance was longing for his home and other paladins (or at least Keith), that meant that somewhere inside of him was a little isle that the moths didn’t get to. If they could find this isle, they could rescue the real Lance. That version of Lance they could heal, that one they could help. He wouldn’t be that wailing, whimpering, begging and almost mindless creature Keith was so repulsed by.

It filled his heart with hope.

But what Sea suggested required her to go into telepathic resonance with Lance and rummage through his brain in whichever way she saw fit.

Keith used to watch and read sci-fi. As far as he understood, even for a nefarious mind-police organization, like Psych-corps, that would be a highly invasive procedure, a third degree interrogation, something that only the likes of Nietzsche’ ubermenschen would go for. The idea that he would sanction something of the sort on Lance was unbearable.

“I get it, Keith,” Shiro said. “I probably get it better than anyone else.”

Come to think of it, Shiro’s head used to be like a busy drive-thru. Galra copied his consciousness and made him forget about it, Haggar did her experiments on him, the Black Lion uploaded his personality into his own central processing core and finally Allura had to download it into the clone. Helluva journey.

From his own experience Keith was aware that Black wasn’t the most gentle when working with someone else’s thought patterns.

Despite all that, Shiro thought the ends justified the means.

“ _You_ survived it,” Keith wasn’t as confident. “But Lance is…”

Lance is what? Weaker? Yeah, that was true. Very few people are as strong as Shiro. 

Lance won’t survive? That’s probably wrong. He’ll survive it, he must. If he has survived this long, there is no way they’ll let him die now.

“I really don’t want to remind you,” said Allura, her reluctance plain on her face. “But his brain is probably damaged by prolonged exposure to the moths. And if we are to believe the hive, he had been unwell even before that. Sea may be able to evaluate those damaged places and tell us how we can help him.” 

“Do you trust her?” asked Keith.

“She has not failed us yet. She even risked her life and health for us.”

Keith looked at Hunk and Pidge. He could see they agreed with Allura. Romelle was keeping her neutrality. She even leaned on the farthest wall of the bridge as if she was not there. 

Coran shrugged. “I trust her no more than a doverian siklins trusts its larvae! But I can’t fathom by what miracle this healing pod is still working, so…” he made a graceful gesture. “I’ll keep a close eye on Lance’s sensors.”

Keith didn’t really have a choice, did he?

He looked at Lance one more time: the same bags under his eyes, the same sallow skin. Then he took a step away from the pod. “OK, let’s do this. Hunk, will you ask Sea to join us?”

***

Lance was taken out of the pod, but they didn’t try to wake him. On the contrary, Coran injected him with a mild sedative. Lance was lying on the “operating table”, his face calm and relaxed, as if his brain was already free from those little crawling jerks.

(Keith felt sick to his stomach and on edge thinking about their tiny buzzing wings inside Lance’s skull.)

Then Coran put an oxygen mask on Lance, so that he could breathe in the methane atmosphere Sea used.

Sea moved closer to the table. Her protective barrier started expanding until it was encasing both her and Lance.

Behind the pinkish glow Lance looked even sicker than before. Again, Keith felt a strong urge to abort, to look for another way out, another treatment option. Perhaps they gave up on the antidote too early? 

He clenched his fist to counter that nibbling desperation and reminded himself that sometimes his infamous instincts were nothing more than a deeply set paranoia. That’s all it was. Lance was going to be alright.

Sea’s platform touched Lance’s cot. The caterpillar lifted the upper part of her body, as her Earth counterparts sometimes did. Her body curved like a question sign hanging above Lance’s motionless body. Her short limbs were moving, as if she too was nervous.

“Is she doing something already or not?” Hunk asked in a stage whisper.

“Why are you whispering?” Pidge elbowed him.

“The quintessence streams are moving…” Allura’s fists were clenched as tight as Keith’s. She stepped forward, as if she wanted to plaster herself to the protection field.

Coran was waiting at the very edge of the field with a hand-held scanner. Lance was covered in sensors from head to toe which transmitted every miniscule detail; Coran seemed alert and ready to catch anything gone awry.

“His heartbeat is a little fast,” Coran muttered.

Something seemed to buzz in Keith’s head. He tried to suppress it, but couldn’t. Never has he been so anxious that his temples pounded and his heart seemed ready to jump into his throat. The bright red flashes before his eyes didn’t make things better either.

For a second it looked as if Sea’s off-white skin became black, Lance’s skin turned acidic green, and the walls of the bridge were painted violet instead of light grey. The world became a negative, but not in the way Keith’s ‘galra sight’ changed things — when his eyes turned yellow, he usually saw everything a bit clearer and colors shifted to the violet part of the spectrum.

“His blood pressure is rising!” Coran added. “But it’s still within the norm.”

His voice sounded echoey, as if speaking from an enormous barrel.

Keith was barely stopping himself from crushing his temples with his fingers. He felt as if heated nails were hammered down into his skull, cracking it into many pieces. 

“Now the pressure is dropping! His heart rate is down too…”

Quiznack, that’s not nerves anymore! That’s something else. It’s growing and growing, and soon it will come out, and Keith will see...

Everything blinked into black-green-violet negative once again, and then Keith saw something else.

He saw the swampy forest on the surface of the planet shrivelling down under the bright burning flames. He saw white sprouts of moths’ “first lifecycle stage” turning into ash. He saw billions and billions of bugs rising in panic above the green canopy — and raining down as embers, floating in the air as pieces of soot.

“Stop it!” Keith shouted. “You’re killing him!”

He braced himself on the floor with one hand and realized he was on his knees. When did he fall..? 

“Keith!” Hunk tried to help him up. “Are you alright? What’s going on with you?”

“I don’t know!” Keith moaned. He was beyond caring about his pride or dignity. Even during the cruelest trainings with the Blades he didn’t endure the kind of pain that was clawing into his head now.

Suddenly the burning stopped. His blood was still hammering into his temples, but now it was tolerable.

“I’m surprised,” he heard Sea’s soft voice. She stopped hanging above Lance and returned her whole body on her platform, but kept her force field expanded, with Lance still in the methane atmosphere. “It seems that the Black’s Paladin sensitivity to telepathy is higher than for the rest of you.”

“I have no idea why,” Keith spat, panting.

“Maybe that’s another one of Galra Keith’s special abilities?” Hunk suggested.

“But galra are not special when it comes to quintessence related stuff,” Pidge countered sensibly. “Even the druids were not galra. It would make sense if he were half-Altean…”

Everybody looked at Allura.

“I don’t know!” She protested. “I didn’t feel a thing! Everybody’s quintessence was the same as always.”

“Maybe I went too fast,” Sea said. “I’ll try again.”

Keith felt a painful desire to make her quit, to end this torture. But nothing had changed; it was still Lance’s best chance.

“Please be careful!” Coran pleaded in a worried tone.

“I’ll be very gentle,” Sea promised.

A part of Keith mentally snorted. If Lance had heard these words addressed to him by a melodic female voice, he’d be in heaven. He’d blush furiously, and Keith would never admit how cute he’d found the display.

Right now, of course, Lance didn’t react.

It went the same as last time: Sea stood up on her platform, hung above Lance. For several minutes nothing happened. Keith’s headache became stronger in creeping increments. Coran was silent.

Suddenly something beeped on Coran’s handheld.

“Please, tread carefully!” he said in a very urgent tone. “His heart rate is slowing down to dangerous levels!”

“I’m very sorry,” Sea said.

But the beeping didn’t stop.

“Sea!” Pidge cried out. “Stop it!”

“Everything is going according to plan,” the caterpillar said in the tone of someone who is on the very edge of success and is irritated by nay-sayers. “Everything is as it should be. The moths are putting up a fight. It’s going to be alright in a tick.”

Keith trembled on shaky legs. Another vision appeared before his eyes, blocking Sea and Lance, as well as the bridge around them. Again, he saw the forest, but this time it was being flooded. The water came very slowly, dark and scary, with a thin rainbow film rippling on the surface. The trees darkened and withered away, the white sprouts tried to swim up and couldn’t. Thousands of adult moths were dying in the waves...

Lance’s blue eyes were looking at him from under the water. He stretched his hand towards Keith, as if asking for help, for a pull to the surface. Keith reached towards him — but couldn’t get past Hunk, who was holding him tight in real life.

“Keith, is this happening again? Please, talk to me!”

“Sea, you need to stop!” Keith breathed out, ignoring Hunk. “Now! You’re hurting him!”

“I’m almost done!” She refused.

“Sea, I have to ask you to stop,” said Coran in a surprisingly steely voice. “Lance’s biological data shows…”

Suddenly Sea curved her body even more and with one of her tiny legs whisked Lance’s breathing mask off.

All of them probably shouted. Keith couldn’t tell, he was busy prying himself out of Hunk’s arms and throwing his body forward. His attack didn’t do much: he hit the pink force field that Sea, unsurprisingly, didn’t lower.

“I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal,” Sea chirped again with the tone of a sincere apology. “You all love your friend, but there is nothing to be done for him anymore. My people are dying because of his emotions!”

“Wolf!” Keith cried out.

Luckily, Wolf heard him. As always. He had left the room because he didn’t like being in close proximity with Lance, but at Keith’s shout he appeared on the bridge, pressed to his leg.

Somehow, Wolf immediately knew what they needed to do. He waited only for Keith to grab his helmet, and in a blink of an eye both of them were inside the pink dome. Keith’s helmet immediately activated when his suit’s sensors detected the lethal environment, and Keith could take a deep breath, swinging his sword on exhale.

He missed this first time. Sea dodged, rose herself once more so she was braced on the lower end of her body, and suddenly fell on Lance. It was the first time Keith really realized how large she was — about eight feet long and wider than Shiro. She probably weighed four or five hundred pounds. And her pincers were so big she could bite Keith’s head off.

But she still was only a caterpillar. She didn’t have any weapons, not even longer limbs.

Black and white sword whipped her across the fat segmented body, painting the off-white skin with dark blood stripe. Sea screamed very high, almost ultrasound, nothing like her synthesized voice.

Wolf growled, then whined and fell on the floor covering his ears with his paws. Keith couldn’t afford to pay attention to him right now.

He jumped onto the cot, kicked Sea’s heavy body down. The room trembled with the heavy thud.

Now he needed to find Lance’s mask.

It fell on the other side of the cot. Keith had to jump down to pick it up and put in on Lance’s face again. Only about half a dobosh had passed, it wasn’t enough for Lance to suffocate or get seriously poisoned, was it?

“How is he, Coran?!” Keith was frantically trying to remember how to do resuscitation properly, and what was the content of methane in Doomgloom’s atmosphere.

It couldn’t be more than oxygen’s percent on Earth, could it? So probably about eight percent, everything else should be inert gases, that’s not too bad, right?

“He is breathing!” Coran shouted. His voice sounded dulled through the forcefield and the helmet. “But Keith…”

Keith’s six sense urged him to turn around.

Sea rose above the floor again, although her huge body was wavering, and dark blood was oozing from her left side where Keith’s sword cut her pastry flesh.

Keith’s reflexes screamed at him to prepare for an attack. But Sea didn’t charge. She probably didn’t fake it when she used her antigrav platform all the time. Her body was too big and amorphous to endure the level of gravity normal to humans.

Instead of a physical blow, Keith felt something wrecking into his psyche, into that very core he never actually called himself, but rather tried to build walls around.

“Oh, foolish Paladin!” Keith thought in Sea’s creepy young girl voice. “They captured you, haven’t you realized?”

He felt as if something was wiggling in his left ear — the one where a moth almost crawled through a couple of days ago.

“Why do you think there was only one moth?”

He saw black water flooding the twisted trees...

“I’ll show you how it is, Paladin! Try to find a way out — if you can!”

...and rising above his head, drowning him in darkness.


	12. A walk along the beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't say that enough, but huge thanks to crumbcake for betaing! If it can be called betaing. She takes the very rough text I provide and reshapes it into something resembling written English. Besides, most of Hunk's words were basically re-written by her :D

One of Garrison’s survival practices was a dangerous water-simulation which looked like this: an air raft was anchored in the center of a reservoir filled with saltwater where special machines created whirlpools so powerful that the raft was tossed about like a ship in a typhoon. Cadets aboard the raft were tasked with holding on for dear life. If you fell overboard, you needed to swim up the ‘shore’, which was not an easy task. 

The simulation chamber was purposefully dark, the black water lit only with little guidelights on the sides of the raft.

Everybody was wearing life jackets and there was a paramedic brigade on standby in case of emergencies. But when the boat was floating in pitch-black darkness, and you were soaked through, and the whirlpool was roaring, the fear tended to suffocate. At that moment everybody was scared shitless that if they were to let go of the rope on the raft it would be the end.

Keith hung on for dear life and was one of the last “survivors” left, but at the very end of the exercise a sharp tug sent him overboard. Later he found out that it was an intentional pull on the part of the instructors — the purpose was not to teach cadets how to grasp ropes tightly, but how to deal with panic in an unstable environment.

He remembered with painful clarity the smell of brine, the physical shock of plunging into icy cold water that knocked the wind out of him and left him gasping for breath. He remembered thinking only “don’t panic!” over and over, like a prayer. He remembered trying to blow water from his nose as he was taught, but somehow water was always in his mouth, in his throat, in his eyes.

Now it all came back, and the fact that this time the black water was only an illusion didn’t help matters at all.

Random images, off-kilter thoughts, emotions and sensations went through him in waves, each making him shiver from the cold or melt with heat. It was hard to breathe, to think, to exist. Something was pulling him further down, as if into that whirlpool.

First it is hot — a sun-baked beach, aquamarine waves lapping on the sand. Panic and laughter are churling noxiously in his chest when something grabs his leg and pulls him away from the shore, to the deep, where you can’t reach warm sand with you fingers and your toes don’t touch ocean bottom.

“Now you’re mine!” a voice roars, unfamiliar to Keith but known to the person he currently inhabits. This person loves this voice. They are family.

The scene changes slightly. Now it’s cooler. The sun is beating on his shoulders, but the rest of his body is submerged in the water. He is the monster, the scariest sea monster, roarrrr! His hand, long and tanned, reaches forward and snags an ankle of a very small dark-skinned girl. She tries to escape higher up the shore, where it’s safe, but you’re much stronger. She doesn’t have a chance.

“No!” the girl shrieks. “Help me!”

She shouts it in Spanish, but Keith understands perfectly.

“Here, take my hand!” a boy a bit older than her runs into the tide’s foam and offers his hand, grinning wildly. The boy is brown-eyed and slightly less tanned than the girl, but his grin is very familiar to Keith.

For a second he and the boy are pulling the girl in a tug of war, then he reluctantly lets go.

“It’s not over yet! You both will be mine sooner or later!”

The next wave is bigger. It crashes on the shore, making both kids lose balance, dragging them out to sea again.

“I told you! I’m the invincible king of the deep!”

He sweeps both kids under his long arms and starts splashing away from the sea shore. Their laughter rings in the air.

It’s cold and painful now. Nothing like this will ever happen again. These children do not exist anymore. They have grown up. He doesn’t know how old they are now, he is too stupid for all that temporal shit. If he is to come back home, familiar eyes will look at him from unfamiliar faces. But he won’t ever be back. He is a deep sea monster, he’ll scatter like a swarm of moths in the air above the beach. He’ll never return.

...Now he is in a boat. It’s rocking on strong waves. It’s very hot, very humid and the air is salty, it smells like steel and ozone. The storm is overhead, pregnant with violet flashes of galran ion cannons. 

To his utter surprise, Keith sees Krolia sitting in front of him, but her skin is pale. Not galran pale, Earth pale. She is smiling bashfully too, almost shyly. Then it strikes Keith that it’s a guy; at least, someone with typical male shoulder-to-waist ratio and flat-chested. Then Keith realizes he is looking at himself through someone else’s eyes.

The scene changes again. Now Keith is in the swamp. It’s a swamp planet. Moth planet. They didn’t really give it a name. The dragons are flying above his head in formation. He knows it’s a battle order. He lifts his blaster — it is very familiar, it sits on his hand and shoulder just so, although Keith never held a bayard transformed into a rifle before. A shot, and a dragon falls down.

The moths swarm around him, blocking pale sunlight seeping through the thick blanket of clouds. Then the swarm flies sideways, like a drawn curtain, and Keith sees himself standing above a fallen dragon. It is the size of a doberman and it tries to crawl away, awkwardly putting its weight on the elbows of its winged limbs.

Keith steps on the long sinuous neck and aims his rifle right into the round eye, that looks almost like a cow’s one — big, dark and elegant.

The dragon opens and closes its long pterodactyl-like mouth adorned with tiny sharp-looking teeth, as if trying to say something. Keith doesn’t hear any words, but he sees things: a narrow dark cave lit with fire burning in the hearth. The eggs resting in the warm ashes. Two other dragons lying atop of the clutch, asleep. Tree roots, scrambling at bare stone; tree branches, laden with fruit. The world falls down under the wings, and the whole mountain valley is beneath him in an instant. It’s something like a canyon, with walls filled with holes like swiss cheese. Keith knows that some of the caves were cut into the stone. Every hole is marked with bright colourful painted patterns.

It’s home, Keith realizes. The dragon asks to let them go.

The sea, the boat, the children laughing in the tide, the smell of garlic bread...

The white maggot-sprouts wiggling in the poisonous fumes.

...Every year general Sanda gives a lecture on the history of conflicts, mandatory for all cadets age sixteen and above. She is reading it now, is talking about the massacre on the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century.

“The scariest thing about genocide,” she says dryly, “is that it is efficient. In fact, it is the surest way to resolve any international problem that mankind has ever created.”

His anger bubbles inside, hot and ugly. How can she say something like that! But the anger seems distant, as if something from a dream. There is another feeling in the forefront. It’s fear. It’s not even a fear of dying in a genocide, it’s the fear that Sanda is right and human nature is really that awful.

“But Earth nations united after all!” says someone inside the student body. Maybe it’s him.

Or maybe it’s someone else. In his neighbours’ faces, in the overall mood, in the soft almost indecipherable whispers jumping around the room he realizes that nobody likes what General tells them, plain as day.

“But the price of that union was three world wars and the destruction of billions of lives. It’s a high price to pay for our current wellbeing, cadet. But we paid it in full.”

The desperation smells like stale water. If he has nothing to return to and a retreat is sure death, he has nothing to lose either.

“And this is our home,” Keith says aloud, although he knows there is nobody here able to hear or understand.

He pulls the trigger. On the spot where a big pleading eye has been a tick ago, there is only a steaming hole surrounded by burnt flesh.

He is a monster. He lives in the deep and never sees the light of day.

But it’s necessary. If that’s the price one pays, he is willing to pay it. He wouldn’t be fighting the galra war if he weren’t.

***

Keith is walking along the beach. It’s the same beach where he saw himself — or someone else? — playing with kids, but it’s night now, maybe late evening. The sand is soft under his feet, with every step it swallows Keith almost up to his knees. To the left the sea is whispering something. To the right a chain of city lights is blinking in the hot air. Somewhere above the beach, on the shore, a searchlight is hidden. Its bright beam is circling the black sky. Sometimes this beam falls onto the beach and floods it with bright yellow light. Then it leaves, and the darkness covers everything again.

Keith’s legs are killing him.

“You see now he can’t live like that. The most humane option is for us to help him stop that.”

That’s not true, Keith wants to answer, but he can’t. His tongue won’t listen to him.

“He is beyond hope. I didn’t want that, I tried to solve it your way, to make it right. But there are no options left. You see his dreams. We can’t stand it.”

What can’t they stand?! The visions of Lance playing with his nephews in the sea? Because Keith realizes now it was Lance he saw.

“The hopelessness. The cruelty. The loneliness. Your fundamental core. We are quite similar if you compare our races with the moths. But at the same time we are so different that your thoughts literally hurt us. Even the way you play with your little ones is cruel.”

But you asked for help! All of your planet came to us for help! And that’s how you’re repaying us!

“I’m not repaying anything. I was sent with you to help you and to ensure that our interests were protected, which is the task you seem to discard as not terribly important. My personality is something that rarely occurs on our world, that is to say, I’m capable of violence. We usually are not. Not like you are, anyway.”

Right, she is called Sea, Keith thinks. He is talking to the sea, it is whispering with soft waves to the left. Sea is something that kills. Cowardly, hypocritical Doomgloomers hid behind her back. They asked for help knowing full well they were planning to take the matter in their own tiny ugly hands...

“You are not fair,” his inner Shiro chastises. “They are suffering.”

Keith knows he is not being fair. He also knows that, as a leader of Voltron, he can’t afford personal feelings. But he is not a leader now. He is just a person who is trying to save his loved one. And if he doesn’t hold on to this anger, he won’t have enough strength...

Another step forward. He sees a rock or a heap on the beach not too far from him. Somehow the beam of light always skips over it, leaving it in the dark. Keith knows that if he reaches it, everything will be alright.

Everything. Will. Be. Alright.

***

“Keith! Wake up, Keith!”

A palm on his cheek. Is he imagining it or not?

“Quiznack, what has she done to him..! To think I called her Cee-Cee! Is there any way we can, like, seriously interrogate her?”

“I’m afraid, Number two, that our guest has lost consciousness. Methane breathers are finicky when it comes to stimulants, I don’t know how to wake her up without killing her!”

“Well, killing her sounds like a great option to me right now! Let me check what I’ve downloaded about the Doomgloomers, though, and I may figure it out—”

“Why did she attack Lance?! She was honestly helping us up to this point! Maybe the killer bugs infested her too? Pidge, do you think these bugs can infest other bugs?”

“It’s all my fault! I should have realized the Doomgloomers had their own goals which wouldn’t always align to ours!”

“Allura, no, don’t blame yourself. Hunk, don’t panic, we will deal with it. Coran, how about giving a stimulant to Keith?”

A palm disappears from Keith’s cheek. For some reason, he is cold now.

“I don’t know, Shiro, first we need to scan him. Hunk, my boy, help me put him onto… yes, Princess, that will do fine.”

Keith has the strangest feeling as if he is being lifted in the air and placed somewhere very carefully, he barely feels the movement.

“Now, his life signs are within normal levels… His brain activity corresponds to extreme drowsiness, semi-sleep.”

“Semi-sleep? Does he hear us? Why doesn’t he wake up then?”

“I don’t know. Alas, I’m not as well versed in human physiology as I should be! One and a half decaphoeb is too short, and you don’t get wounded very enough — which is good, don’t get me wrong!”

“Guys, I can’t find anything on Sea’s people, but I have an idea. What if we give Keith the same moth activity inhibitor we’ve already used on Lance?”

“Why? Pidge, do you suggest he is…”

“He is the only one who ever took off his helmet, Shiro. And he was near Lance when he did that. Maybe the moths were able to hack his brain after all, it just took some time.”

A stretch of silence. A soft voice: “Indeed, number five… I see traces of moth activity in his brain. Considerably fewer, than in Lance’s brain, but…”

“Is it just me or did Keith have the best idea ever when he suggested burning this forest the quiznack down?”

“Pidge!”

“What, Allura? We’re all thinking about it, even Shiro, I see it in his face!”

“If we destroy a sentient race than we are no better than Zarkon or his progeny! I swore I wouldn’t let it happen to even one more planet!”

“Don’t you think you were too quick to take that oath, considering how many disasters we have seen?”

“I think Allura is right, a big charring fire is never good, you know? Except for grilling sometimes. As for now, we haven’t actually tried to reason with them! I mean, Sea said they couldn’t do anything, but does anyone here still trust Sea?”

“Hunk, we don’t trust Sea, but we cannot negotiate without a telepath. I don’t want to risk neither Keith, nor Lance, but so far only Keith’s threats to burn the forest gave us any results. It may be our only option.”

“Wait a minute, Shiro! You mean that if burning the hive down kills Lance but brings Keith back, then you’re ready to sacrifice Lance?!”

“That’s not what I meant at all, Hunk. We do not want to make a hasty decision but every second counts. We don’t know what caused the irreparable damage to Lance’s brain. It’s possible it was the prolonged exposure to the moths. Keith is exposed to them right now, we can’t risk him suffering the same fate!”

“You’re only saying that because you like Keith more! But you know what? I like Lance more than Keith and more than you too, because he has always been here, and he never ran away to join space samurais, and he never chilled out in the head of a giant cat after dumping us on his evil clone!”

“Hunk, enough! You are going to regret what you’ve said later! Shiro, nobody blames you...”

“OK, guys, if the three of you stop your hysterics for a second, I have a plan! Shiro, if Keith is under the moths’ influence, we have the communication channel — we can talk through him! Coran, can you give Keith a very small dose of that moth inhibitor? Maybe it will make him lucid enough to talk to us. And then he will be able to talk to the hive… or even to Lance himself!”

“I don’t see why not. But I have to mention once again that this drug is experimental. Princess, can you use Oriande’s magic to monitor Keith’s condition?”

“I’ll try, but so far I had no luck with Lance… Pidge, if your plan works out, if Keith is able to connect to Lance, he _will_ bring him back. I have the utmost faith in him.”

“Unless he gets stuck there himself.”

“Gee, Hunk, so much trust!”

He feels a prick in his neck. Everything becomes clearer, as if coming into focus. His eyes see light and darkness, although a part of Keith still thinks he is walking along a dark beach. A strange heap (or is it a rock?) is still calling to him from far ahead, like a beacon. And at the same time he is looking at Shiro’s worried face, who looks much older than his twenty seven or whatever age he is at the moment, Keith is not sure; and he also sees Hunk’s face, tear-stricken and miserable. Hunk is wiping his tears with his sleeve, not ashamed to cry.

“Keith, do you hear us?” Despite an achingly worrying expression, Shiro’s voice is tender and calm, the same as when Keith was a kid and Shiro visited him in the Garrison’s med quarters when he caught a particularly nasty flu. “If you understand me but can’t talk, blink once. Or say moo.”

Keith wants to laugh, but he barely has enough strength to lift his eyelids and then bring them down.

“OK, got it. One blink means ‘yes’, two blinks means ‘no’. Do you know what’s happening?”

Keith blinks yes.

“Have you heard our conversation just now?”

Keith blinks again.

“Oh, quiznack!” Hunk pales. “Keith, I’m so sorry, I didn’t really mean…”

“Stop!” Shiro raises his hand. “You can apologize later, but I’m sure Keith understands your fear for Lance.”

“Yeah, I know he is in love with him,” Hunk murmurs, and Keith cannot even react to this revelation.

In love? Funny, he would never call it that. It felt too raw, too deep, too much a part of himself; not an emotion or a feeling, but a character trait. Keith has black hair, is reckless and loves Lance, simple as that. And he only figured that out about himself very recently.

Allura enters Keith’s field of vision. “Keith, we think you could contact Lance through the moths. They influence you less than him, but you do have a connection…”

“Like a computer interface,” says Pidge’s voice, high and trembling. “Think like… Lance is plugged in by a cable, but you have a bluetooth to Lance’s device.”

“We will try to figure out what is wrong with him, because we cannot trust anything Sea told us anymore. Possibly, we will be able to bring Lance back to himself. Do you agree to try?”

Keith blinks.

“Do you have any idea where to start?”

Keith blinks twice, and immediately realizes he made a mistake.

“I’ll try to guide you,” Allura puts her fingers on his temples. Her touch is familiar and soothing, but her skin is too hot. Keith is freezing. “I’m not a telepath myself, and the quintessence connection is barely noticeable, but I’ll do my best.”

Keith blinks twice, hoping to correct.

“Why? Don’t you want my help?” Allura sounds surprised, even hurt a bit.

Keith blinks twice again.

“Is something wrong?”

One blink.

“Is something bothering you?”

Yes.

“What is it? Our sensors? Coran’s antitoxin?”

No and no.

“I know!” Hunk says eagerly, as if trying to make amends. “It’s probably Sea! She may be unconscious, but what if it doesn’t prevent her from using her telepathy?”

Keith blinks once, relieved.

Allura purses her lips.

“Coran, Romelle, please, isolate Sea in the storage unit. I think physical distance should suffice. Speaking about physical distance, it may also help if we arrange Lance so that his and Keith’s hands touch. Then let’s try again.”

But Keith drops back so quick he doesn’t feel any touches.

***

Keith is walking along the beach again. It’s pretty much a routine now.

This time the heap ahead gets closer and closer. The sand doesn’t swallow his feet as it used to. The ground is trembling, but this trembling almost pushes Keith forward. It’s very familiar.

Keith realizes that it’s a giant lion rumbling nearby, quietly and angrily.

Now the heap — or the rock — is right before him, and Keith sees that it’s not actually either. It is millions and millions of moths, sitting together, the same way as in their artificial “brain”. They are crawling over each other, their wings trembling.

In the moonlight the wings are not grey — they are pearly.

For the first time Keith realizes the moths can be considered beautiful.

Lion’s roar makes the ground shake, and some of the bugs are flying away, either scared or just swept by the wind. The heap is much smaller now, and Keith sees blue lightless eyes peeking at him from its depth.

Keith takes a step inside the heap. He doesn’t care that the bugs are caught in his hair and cling to his clothes. He needs to reach Lance.

So he does. Lance’s skin is very cold.

Keith pulls him closer, cards both his hands through his hair, tucks his head at the crook of his neck — the same way Shiro did to him when they embraced before the first battle with Zarkon; the last time Keith hugged the real Shiro in his born body. The rest of the moths fly away with soft rustling. He and Lance are alone together on the beach now.

Lance’s cold nose touches Keith’s skin, and it seems so real, as if this thing around them is not a combination of a nightmare and a bad trip, but the perfectly solid reality. The only thing that vaguely bothers Keith is that he is supposed to be in his armor, maybe in the under armour suit, not in his t-shirt. But it’s all good anyway. Keith’s neck starts to get wet.

“Lance… Are you—” Keith puts his palms on Lance’s cheekbones, gently distances his head a little to look at him. Tears are trickling down Lance’s cheeks, but he is silent. “Lance! Please, say something!” No reaction.

Then Keith does something he’d never do two years ago according to his personal timeline — he kisses Lance on the mouth, hot and firm. He doesn’t try to french, the kiss is chaste, but there is nothing about it that could be deemed platonic. Lance’s lips are cool and chapped.

“Please, wake up! Everybody is beside themselves because of you. Hunk tried to bully Shiro — can you imagine? I think, Pidge is going to ugly cry, and you should see Allura—”

Something changes in Lance’s eyes. They grow hazy and determined at the same time.

“Kee-ith…” Lance murmurs, and suddenly slides down on his knees, right in the sand.

Keith panics for a second — he doesn’t know what it means, he is afraid that Lance got worse somehow — but he suddenly unzips Keith’s jeans, and it is so unexpected that Keith can’t breathe for a second. Lance is panting hot against his dick, trying to free it from the underwear through the slit.

“Lance! Wait, wait, what are you doing! It’s not the time! Or place! Or… or anything! Lance!”

Lance definitely knows what he is doing, and makes it abundantly clear for Keith too. Being the king of poor timing, Lance, apparently, has no objection to the right here and right now.

A second later, Keith is enveloped by Lance’s wet mouth, and it’s so mortifying and so amazing at the same time Keith literally can’t think for a moment. 

That’s when everything disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I'm leaving on vacation so there won't be updates for a while! The next chapter is translated but not edited, so I hope to post it as soon as I return, maybe on the 21th or 22nd.


	13. Evil Clones

The ocean rose and swallowed them whole.

Two of them were then dropped somewhere. Or, possibly, the world tilted, shifted to another dimension, turned the corner. The beach and the light beam were gone. Keith was standing almost up to his waist in thick white fog that smelled like overheated vapor. The low hum in his ear reminded him of a Galran hyperspace engine working on no-load. Keith used to listen to this hum in his nightmares, when he was little. He then would wake up and cry for his father. Now the old terror came to him afresh.

What didn’t align with that old nightmare was his arousal, burning in his veins under Lance’s mouth and tongue. But it was impossible to quench, the logic of that strange dream-like state demanded him to follow through. He hadn’t even thought about sex a second ago, but now he snatched what was offered with both hands, grabbing Lance's hair, controling. The questions of what the quiznack was going on and his stubborn resolve to get Lance out of here faded into the background. The only thing left was Lance. He is with Lance. It’s Lance’s lips on his dick. It’s his tongue, too loose, always ready to brag or to spew romantic nonsense that is playing with Keith’s flesh, digging into the foreskin to touch the most sensitive spot… It’s his fingers that envelope Keith’s shaft, rake through his pubic hair, caress his balls.

The long shadows of lashes on his cheeks, the drops of wetness in the corners of his eyes, the tear streaks that run past his stretch lips — all of that dragged Keith’s attention like a gravitational pull. The way Lance reacted threw Keith into a loop; the more he pressed on, the more Lance seemed to submit, and the addiction of it boiled hot in Keith’s veins. This compulsion for more seemed impossible to shake off, even though he knew that now wasn’t the time or the place, that Keith probably sentenced them to death with his inaction.

Keith was cradling Lance’s head with one hand, with the other he grabbed the hair near his forehead, where it was longer, to limit his movements. He then began pistoning in and out Lance’s greedy, sucking mouth — hard and fast. Lance never protested, he just moaned and curved his back, and grasped at Keith’s thighs, crumpling the fabric of Keith’s jeans. The noise Lance was making was getting more frenzied, his mouth slack to get as much of Keith down his throat as he could, as if he was desperate to make Keith come, as if it was another competition for him...

‘This is Lance,’ Keith’s thought overwhelmed all else. ‘Lance, who had been imprisoned by the moths. Lance, whom I kissed. Lance whom I have to get back.’

Only at this moment Keith realized the moths were still there — they were spiralling around him and Lance in two streams, like a DNA sequence. With an enormous effort he stilled his hips — which only resulted in Lance taking over, licking and sucking him up like a lollipop.

“Lance, please, stop…” His fingers didn’t want to let go of auburn hair. “Please, stop — we need — to get out of here—”

Lance let Keith out of his mouth and looked up at him with wild eyes.

“You don’t really want that,” his voice sounded raspy and very low, lower than usual. “You want something different from me…”

“I want you to wake up, you idiot!” Keith tried to shove Lance aside, at least, he was sure he was doing that, but his hands grasped Lance’s T-shirt on his shoulders on his own volition. Only then Keith realized it was the same very familiar white and blue shirt. “I don’t want to fuck you here! I don’t even know if it is really you!”

Lance smiled like a Cheshire cat. That smile seemed to cast a shadow on his face.

“Who else could it be? And what if I want you to fuck me? What if it was the only reason I picked on you for all these years? I can’t believe you never saw that!”

Keith felt as if he was burned by hot tar. Again, this Lance was different. The real one was quick to bicker with Keith for any reason at all and gave as good as he got. He never forgot that Keith’s shenanigans in the Garrison cost Lance additional time in the simulators, which eventually led to him not qualifying for the fighter pilots program (Keith had no idea and would never have realized if Hunk hadn’t opened his eyes). But still, the real Lance eventually forgave Keith and got over his differences in order to work together. He would never reduce their relationship — which was never simple and always overflowing with all kinds of emotions — to primitive lust at the level of a prom night quickie!

Keith would vastly prefer the Lance that was sharp, even downright nasty sometimes, awkwardly flirting with all the aliens they came across and getting violently crimson if some of them reciprocated! He would be much better than this weird courtesan, which was somehow so skilled in petting Keith’s dick with his long fingers and teasing his slit with his pink tongue!

The mix of repulsion and horror made Keith hold his breath. He felt nauseous again, and his headache returned with a vengeance.

“Get away from him, you sick bastard!”

That voice… It can’t be!

Keith turned around in one smooth motion, subconsciously reaching for a bayard on his thigh. But he had no bayard here. However, the second Lance, standing behind Keith, had one, painted with familiar red and white. Now this bayard was in the form of a sniper rifle, and it was aimed straight between Keith’s eyes.

Lance number one, the seducer, laughed — a melodic, sultry sound — without rising from his kneeled position. The fog was hiding him almost up to his shoulders.

“Lance… is that you?!” Keith was looking at the second iteration.

A laser beam swished by Keith’s cheek, almost singeing a lock of his hair. It was so unexpected that Keith didn’t even flinch.

“Get away from him. I won’t say it a third time.”

Obeying his reflexes rather than a conscious thought, Keith took a step to the left, at the same time trying to zip up with clumsy fingers. Another Lance. Maybe it’s only to be expected. They are in a telepathic dimension, right? Inside Lance’s mind. Maybe the moths created the first one to sidetrack Keith and never let him find the second.

“Lance, is that really you?”

“Who else did you expect to find here?” the second one echoed the same phrase the first one had said. “Hands up, so that I could see them! Up, I said!”

Keith slowly followed the order. He had to bite several obviously wrong conversations starters, like “It’s not what you think!” and “I can explain”!

“Ok, now, explain to me, samurai, why the hell you decided it was a good idea to fuck your poor friend drugged by alien bugs up to his brows?!”

“I decided?!” Keith yelled indignantly. “I only tried—”

“You kissed me!” Lance-the-seducer laughed. “That was enough. We both went crazy just like that. Get it? That’s a dream. No self-control. What you want is what you get.”

“Speak for yourself!” Keith barked at him.

“OK, I warned you!” Lance-the-sniper dropped the rifle (it disappeared in a blue flash) and rushed at Keith, howling like a football quarterback.

Keith dodged. Or, he should have dodged, he couldn’t not dodge, because an attacking Lance was not a beast on par with an attacking Shiro, and Keith was good at dodging an attacking Shiro sometimes, and he never lost to Shiro after a first attack! But it was as if Lance could see where Keith was going to move and changed his trajectory accordingly.

Lance hit Keith as a heavy weight and they rolled around the ground — which was an extremely rough terrain, sharp with something like boulders and crunchy twigs that Keith couldn’t see through the fog. Keith’s jacket saved him from the worst, but something scratched his neck and another something painfully jabbed his back.

Keith tried to take the initiative but somehow in this not-quite-dream he was fighting no better than Lance — or Lance was fighting no worse than Keith, it was hard to figure out. Their hits didn’t fully land, but no amount of effort to break the hold and put some distance between them worked. So they rolled around the ground, as if on a schoolyard, trying to beat each other up without much success, and it seemed to be lasting forever...

Lance-the-seducer was still standing on his knees nearby and laughing.

Deja vu. Keith fought with Shiro like that on the floor of a disintegrating space station, with Shiro’s copies surrounding them — silent, identical, all with both hands and wholly dark hair...

“Stop!” That yell came from deep inside Keith, bypassing his sense, reason and remaining pride. “Please, stop, I can’t fight you! I don’t want…” it was somehow impossible to say ‘I love you!’, much more difficult than with Shiro. “You’re my friend!”

But Lance didn’t stop. His features darkened with rage and he lifted his fist preparing to strike... 

But at this very moment someone else grasped Lance’s hand, and with one mighty pull tugged Lance off Keith.

“Keith, buddy! I’m so glad you came!”

Another body fell onto Keith, pressing him into the ground, which made all the sharp edges dig into his back. But this time he was hugged within an inch of his life, someone’s warm cheek touching his. There was a sob near his ear, and Keith, raising his hands, felt short soft hair under his fingers. He grasped this hair a few minutes ago, during an impromptu blowjob.

“Lance?” murmured Keith a third time. Well, they say the third time is the charm, don’t they?

A head, still pressed to Keith’s, nodded several times.

“The one and only!” said the third clone giggling.

Despite the white fog Keith still could see the other two, as if their silhouettes were drawn by a black pen on top of the fog. One of them was still kneeling. The other was sitting nearby, rubbing at his shoulder, but not saying anything.

The third Lance, colourful and very real, at least let Keith go, stood up and offered him a firm hand, helping him to his feet.

Keith let Lance pull him up, not knowing what to think.

“God, I’m so happy to see you, you don’t even know!” Lance’s eyes were bright as stars. “I almost stopped believing you guys will find me! It’s not that I doubted you, not for a second, you obviously couldn't have left the most valuable member of your team, yadda-yadda, but it was three years! I thought, you were in a temporal whirlpool, or you got stuck with an autograph queue a million miles long, or another Sendak or the like attacked Earth and you had to defeat it pronto… there could be so many things! But you came, Keith! Oh hell, I missed you so much!” 

He was grasping Keith’s shoulders as if he was afraid to let him go.

At last, thank quiznack! The real Lance, finally!

Keith looked sideways at the two wrong copies, then again at his friend.

“Lance, your brain was taken over by alien insects! We need to get you out of here as soon as possible! Will you come with me?”

“Of course I will!” Lance sounded enthusiastic. “Why insects, though? I thought they were something like medusae…”

‘Technically I’m more like medusae…’ That or almost that said the captured Lance during their fight in the improvised lab. The memory made Keith’s hair stand on edge, but he reasoned with himself. There is nothing wrong with Lance remembering moths, right? What they need is just to make him wake up like a normal person and stay normal. Whatever last dregs of moth’s influence there are can wait. Allura will purge them later, or they’ll find a good psychiatrist, or something.

“Doesn’t matter. Just… just walk away with me, please!”

And they went. The ground was crunching under their feet. Sometimes something had to be kicked aside and rolled away — stones and twigs, Keith presumed. If not for the obstacles, Keith would think they were not moving anywhere. The white fog around them stayed the same, as if they were using a treadmill. The only good thing was that Lance’s hand stayed warm and alive in his hand, and Lance didn’t take it away.

After about ten minutes (the time seemed funny) Keith turned back and saw that the ghostly silhouettes of the other Lances didn’t go anywhere. They became less distinct, but he still could see their rough shapes, as if they were following them. But how could they follow if one of them was still sitting and the other kneeling? 

“What’s going on?” Keith asked. “Lance, why can’t we go anywhere?”

“Is something wrong?” Lance asked with mild surprise. “Dang it, samurai, you said you wanted to walk with me, so we are walking! What’s not to your liking? Am I boring you already?”

“I wanted to get out of here! Where is the way out?”

“Where is here?”

Lance was looking at him with slight confusion and the beginning of suspicion, as if he would decide in a moment that Keith was trolling him.

“Here in your… head, mental sphere, I don’t know!”

“Keith, buddy,” Lance put his hands on Keith’s shoulders again, bent his neck a bit and looked straight into Keith’s eyes. “I know we were not always the best of friends, but to drill a hole in my head is a bit extreme! Besides, can you imagine what my handsome face would look like?”

“I don’t want to drill a hole in your head! Why would you think that?!”

“But you want to find a way out of my head! That’s the only way out I can think of!”

“Stop kidding around Let’s have a real talk! What’s happening right now?! Do you even know?!”

Keith shouted these last words — it all become too much, he couldn’t help it.

His shout seemed to destroy the curtain of fog. The world slowly came to be around them, as if on an ancient polaroid film. They were standing on a vast flatland, covered with bones. Luckily, none of the bones looked human. Long skulls with sharp teeth, thin crooked limbs, long fingers, fanning from an upper bone — although most of these fingers were scattered beneath their feet like small white legos.

And there were a lot of Lances everywhere across this flatland. Some were sitting among the bones, the others were standing or walking. One pair was tossing each other a skull without lower jaw. One of the Lances was cleaning a sniper rifle, which looked only marginally like his bayard.

Most of them were wearing familiar clothes: jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers, a hooded jacket. But some Lances were in Garrison uniforms, the others were in short shorts and loose short-sleeved T-shirts, one was even (Keith didn’t believe his eyes) in a Marmoran outfit! Some Lance’s were distinctly younger than others. One looked very old to Keith, almost forty. He also probably had an artificial eye, but he was standing too far off, so maybe he didn’t see it clearly.

“Who is the real one?” Keith asked ‘his’ Lance.

But he stood motionless, hugging his own shoulders and looking at the ground, silent.

The other voice answered in his stead — the expected one, and it came from behind Keith, again.

“Every one is a real one in a way. I told you, it’s my head. Who else did you expect to find here?”

Keith turned around.

The fourth Lance looked a bit older than the other three — probably because of circles under his eyes and grey moths in his hair. Unlike his predecessors, he was wearing his Paladin armor, cracked and broken, with a piece missing on his chest, dirtied by blood and mud.

“Did they give you multiple personalities disorder?” It was the first thing that came to Keith’s mind.

Or… or was Lance always like that? Was it why the moths called him broken? Maybe it was more literal than they thought. Shattered into many pieces—

The fourth Lance — the serious one — shook his head.

“Why do you always think of such horrible things first? No, it’s nothing like that. You too have a lot of different Keiths in your head. One wants to cut off his mullet, the other still thinks that’s the coolest haircut ever. One sees himself as a Blade, the other sees himself as a Paladin. One would like to fuck me, the other thinks… how did you put it? That it’s primitive lust at the level of a prom night quickie!”

Keith swallowed. Damn, so Lance knew all his thoughts now?!

Lance nodded. “Yes, you’re in my head after all! It’s only natural!”

“So why are you messing with me? Why did you show me all these copies?! Why couldn’t you tell me that from the start?!”

Lance shrugged, smiling helplessly. “To tell you what? I’m always trying to give people what they want, that’s who I am as a person! Especially to you, that’s just how things are between us.”

“You are giving me what I want?!”

“The way I understand it, yes,” Lance sighed. “When I teased you, it’s only because I couldn’t get a reaction otherwise. So whatever you wanted from me, I tried to give to you in whatever way you let me. Now you wanted a real talk. So we talk, it can’t be realer than that.”

Keith’s heart shattered. “Then please tell me how I can help you! Please!”

Lance’s eyes became colder, lips pressed together thinly. “If you want to help me, find a way to block excess telepathy so that the Doomgloomers won’t suffer and won’t send anyone else to kill me. And then fly away and leave me here.” 

“What? Lance, do you realize we’re going to Earth?” Keith got a horrible suspicion that he was talking not to Lance but to the moths after all. “You wanted to go home so badly!”

“Full disclosure, I still do,” Lance licked his lips nervously. “But I’ll get over it. Can’t you see what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you see all these dragons? Before I arrived, the moths were losing to them because dragons can’t be captured telepathically! Dragons burned whole masses of the forest. I developed tactics and strategies for the moths. My background knowledge were enough to start developing chemical weapons. Quiznack, if not for me, they would never know what is war and genocide! They just don’t have these notions! They would never even become self-aware — their biology wouldn’t let them if they hadn’t stumbled upon me! So, you see, I need to keep my promises, uphold my responsibilities and so on.”

Keith remembered: I’m a monster of the deep.

“We will make peace between dragons and moths,” said Keith, only half-believing his own words. “Pidge and Hunk will figure out a solution, Allura and Shiro will negotiate it!”

Lance shook his head again. “If you’ll be able to pull it off, good. Because the dragons can’t be negotiated with. I tried, the moths tried. They start breathing fire at the slightest telepathic touch!”

“Will you be able to come with us if we succeed?”

“No, but I’ll have more breathing room here. Keith, how can I leave the better part of me? We’re the same personality! I can’t live without them, I’ll wither and die! You saw it when Coran woke me up for a bit, didn’t you?”

“Do you remember that?” asked Keith. Somehow he had an impression this Lance didn’t.

“Mostly from your memory,” Lance admitted reluctantly. “For me it’s kinda muddled. As if I blacked out when I crash-landed here, and never quite woke up after that, just dreamt a lot.”

Keith felt his hope springing up. “If you’re not completely lucid, maybe you don’t see the whole picture? Maybe you’re missing an obvious solution?”

Lance smiled darkly. “Are you prepared to waste several months or years searching for this obvious solution? As I see it, you’re in a hurry to get to Earth.”

“We can’t leave you here!”

“Even if I’m asking you to?” Lance narrowed his eyes unkindly. “Or do you think that my own decision doesn’t count because I can’t articulate it by word of mouth? Oh, wait, I did say what I want! Several times! When you made me wake up! But you didn’t like it, so you never accepted it!”

A wave of fear rose inside Keith, followed by a wave of irritation, together with pain and despair surfing on their edges. He used to think some words were impossible to say, but now he could hardly contain them inside his mouth.

“I didn’t like it because I care about you! And not only as a friend! I love you and I can’t leave you here!”

This exclamation didn’t have an effect Keith counted on in his heart of hearts. Lance swallowed nervously, scratched his head and averted his eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I… I loved you too, I guess? Or I still do? It’s so difficult to figure out these days! It’s just… It doesn’t change anything, you know? It’s not enough.”

“It’s not enough?!” Keith didn’t believe his ears. “What do you need then?!”

“I told you already what I need. Sorry, I can’t help you anymore.”

‘I can’t help you anymore’ — that was a winner! Keith almost swallowed his own tongue in anger and surprise. 

“And you need to go, probably,” Lance continued, meanwhile, still averting his eyes. “The others are probably crazy worried about you… You can kiss me goodbye, if you want. Any me you like. Just pick any one who is older than sixteen, it would be too weird otherwise.”

Keith recoiled. “I won’t give up,” he promised softly. “I won’t, you know me.”

Clenching his fists, he rushed to leave, stomping on fragile bones. He was trembling from anger aimed at himself and at Lance, but his eyes were hot, the throat tight. First time since the Blades trials when he felt like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys, I'm back! :)


	14. Sea vs. Lance

Coran moved the portable diagnostic screen closer to Keith. The display revealed a fleshy mass that was wriggling and slithering in front of a baby pink background ; not the most appealing sight. Sometimes Keith could see small white dots in this mess. 

“What’s… that?” asked Keith.

If he were Hunk, he’d be throwing up already. Even not being Hunk, he had to card his fingers through Wolf’s mane to gain some semblance of control. Wolf’s head was laying on Keith’s lap; the beast was constantly trying to look into his eyes, whining softly. He clearly didn’t understand what had happened to his friend and how he could undo all that.

“That is the picture of your primitive brain, of course!” Coran twirled his moustache. “Though it’s a bit silly of me to say so. During our journey we came across a lot of minds more primitive than yours! Also, as you’ve aged, your brain has grown much more structurally sound.”

“OK,” Keith murmured. He was still drowsy, his much more structurally sound brain refusing to process anything. According to his friends, he was out alongside Lance for almost 26 vargas. Lance was still sleeping, now hooked to an intravenous nutrition solution. “And what exactly does this picture show you?”

“These white dots are the moth maggots that serve as conduits for telepathic signals,” Pidge explained. “They are actually pretty neat, we could extract one from Lance’s nose. The Olkari would like them.”

Keith didn’t even need to channel Hunk: epic barfing was on its way.

“Do you need a bucket?” Hunk deciphered Keith’s expression correctly and shoved a small plastic sample container right under his nose.

Keith was immediately grateful for such a thoughtful gesture, while Wolf barely managed to jump aside, loudly complaining of his hurt feelings. Allura quickly busied herself with comforting him.

When his spasms died down and the bucket was safely emptied into the waste disposal, Coran continued his explanations.

“I was able to adjust the dosage of antitoxin. With it I can control the moth population in your head. There needs to be enough for you to establish a telepathic connection with Lance but not so much that you lose yourself to the hive. We can also rid you of them entirely…”

“Or rather, we think we can,” Allura stopped petting Wolf and glared at Coran. “We are not sure, really. You should not react as strongly as Lance if we were to extract all the moths from you. But, unfortunately, there are no guarantees.”

“Of course, we can always infest you again,” Pidge added. “But obviously nobody likes this idea.”

“But it’s all up to you,” Shiro touched the bed near Keith’s head. “Just say a word, and we’ll risk it. I don’t like these parasites staying inside you.”

Keith shook his head and squared his shoulders. “No,” he said. “I need to try once again. I need to try to reach the real Lance.”

“Are you sure you haven’t talked to the real him?” Pidge asked.

Her bangs were shading her glasses, so Keith didn’t see her eyes.

“He said he didn’t want to come back!” Keith surprised himself by almost crying. He had to clutch the sheet Coran threw over him to try and stop shaking. “He told me that he can’t leave the moths, the same thing he told us when he was conscious!”

‘He threw my confession back at me. Even worse. He told me he loved me too, but it didn’t mean anything. Which can’t possibly be like that. Not for Lance.’

That one Keith couldn’t say aloud even if he wanted to; it was too raw and too personal.

Hunk and Pidge exchanged looks.

“You mean,” Hunk said slowly, “the thing we heard from Lance when we woke him was the same thing you heard from Lance when you contacted him telepathically, and we are all set on not believing it? Because we don’t like it?”

“Because deep inside he is hurting!” Now Keith couldn’t refrain from shouting. “The thing that started all of this, the very thing that explains why Sea wanted to kill him, is that he is hurting so much that he is broadcasting it to the entire Galaxy! Even if he is real, I mean, even if it’s the real him who is set to ignore it, how can we be friends to him if we just let it go on like that?!”

Nice one, Keith. Way better than ‘because I’m pissed at him for not reacting to my L-word with tears of happiness and promises of eternal passion’.

“Hey, hey, sorry!” Hunk raised his hands. “Please don’t flash the Galra eyes at me! I don’t want to abandon Lance either! I’m just making sure we all acknowledge how hypocritical we’re being!”

“We’re not being hypocrites,” Keith managed to control his temper. “We’re trying to understand!”

‘Because if the real Lance really prefers the moths over me, I’ll feel even worse than after he forgot our bonding moment on Arus…’

“Or we’re trying to fit the facts to the theory we like more,” Pidge adjusted her glasses again. “Very human approach.”

“And very Altean, too,” Coran noted.

Allura nodded. “I also have no intentions of leaving Lance here, no matter how much he asks for it. If he repeats the same sentiment while he is sound of mind and completely free from moths, then he could go back on his own volition.”

“Now we just need to think up a plan over how to really get him back,” Hunk sighed. “Keith, did you try to tell him something nice, so that he would want to return? Like, you know he likes compliments, right? Also, did you try to remind him of his siblings and other family?”

Keith felt his face flushing. That’s what he should have talked about instead of pouring out his stupid feelings! Why did he decide Lance needed anything from him? Just because he appeared in Lance’s dreams looking like a K-pop singer wannabe? He should have realized it really meant nothing: the recent events proved that the insides of Lance’s mind is a mysterious and tangled place. It’s no wonder Sea had so many problems with human thoughts!

But whatever else happened inside Lance’s mind, his family was always in his thoughts. If Keith would have focused on that…

Or he could at least really have said something nice to Lance instead of insulting him, sniping at him and fucking his mouth.

“No, but I…” Keith swallowed. “His niece and nephew are always on his mind! And he thought about Cuba! You guys all saw his dreams, right?” He facepalmed. “OK, I fucked up.”

“You yelled at him again, didn’t you?” asked Pidge with a surprising amount of sympathy.

“We had a fight. As in fists flying.”

A tense silence followed.

“I’m sorry,” said Romelle. She was sitting on a makeshift chair (re: a box) by the row of screens, elbows on her lap and fists at her cheeks, clearly torn between bored and fascinated. “I don’t want to break this thing you have going, but I accidentally toggled that switch that shows the insides of Sea’s cell… I mean, her quarters… And she seems to be missing.”

***

Keith ignored Allura’s and Coran’s warnings that he needed more rest and donned his paladin armor again. His muscles were tingling from the lack of movement, but he felt much better. Wolf kept at his side always, silently supporting. That helped a lot.

Keith also felt the Black lion’s support somewhere deep inside himself. It kept him this side of hysterics, stopping him from yelling at everybody and hiding in the deep corner, or falling into a training routine, taking out his anger — including his anger at Lance — on a robot. (Although they didn’t have any training bots anymore, only computer simulations.)

The Black Lion’s presence reminded him that he was the Black paladin after all. He was responsible for the whole team, not only for Lance. It doesn’t matter that he temporarily forgot about it, losing himself into saving one person. If Sea’s schemes somehow threatened everybody else...

When Wolf teleported him from the cargo hold of the Black lion back onto the bridge of the old space station, an animated discussion of precisely this problem was underway.

“Seriously, how could she run away? I triple-checked everything!”

“Hunk, I don’t want to make you feel bad, but it’s the Doomgloomers construction,” Shiro said. “They could still have secret passages or lifeboats which you didn’t notice. Adam always said…” Shiro caught himself.

“We should have placed her in one of the lions!” Allura pursed her lips. “I should have thought about it! We haven’t dealt with a prisoner you can’t put into a cryopod for too long…”

“If you don’t count Lotor,” Hunk corrected. “Who escaped by manipulating us. By the way, even Sendak escaped thanks to mind tricks! Quiznack, all our prisoners outsmart us!”

“I resent that notion!” Pidge exclaimed.

“It doesn’t matter how she escaped, the ‘where’ is more important,” Keith interrupted her, rubbing at his temples. “Hunk, can you track what kind of secret bot was hidden on the station? Will she be able to get to Doomgloom on it and call for reinforcement?”

“No way, Doomgloomers don’t have interstellar travel technologies,” Hunk shook his head. “This station is the peak of what they can do.”

“That’s what they told us,” Romelle countered. “I wouldn’t be too quick to believe them now.”

Everybody exchanged glances.

“Nah, you can’t just hide this level of technical progress,” Pidge shrugged. “This kind of tech needs, like, planet-size industry! I doubt that even Earth could build more than a single spaceship even if the whole planet worked on it! Which doesn’t negate the possibility that there was a small imported space vessel here, capable of flying faster than the speed of light. Something like what Shiro used to get to Earth when he escaped from the Galra for the first time.”

“It was the only time I escaped from the Galra,” Shiro corrected her, soft, but firm.

“Yeah, sorry. Anyway, there could be a star-faring vessel hidden inside the station, but what’s the point? Sea didn’t want to run home. I think everything she did from the beginning served one purpose only…”

“To help her people,” Allura finished for her. “You mean she hid somewhere on the station so she could try to kill Lance once more?”

Her anxious gaze briefly darted to where an unmoving figure was laying on an improvised cot. Everybody tried to avoid looking at Lance as much as possible.

“I doubt it, she is no ninja. And there are no methane breathing signatures on the base anymore. Green can vouch for that. I think we need to tackle this problem from another end…”

“What do you mean?” Keith tried to talk without hurry and desperation in his voice. Pidge wasn’t prone to dramatic pauses, he didn’t need to press her. If she hadn’t said what her idea was immediately, she probably hadn’t thought it over in details, and was still figuring it out on the fly even as she explained it.

“If you can’t destroy the transmitter,” she continued slowly confirming Keith’s suspicion that she was not very sure herself, “you can try to smash the amplifier… I mean, the moths.”

“As you said yourself, she is no ninja,” Hunk frowned. “And she doesn’t have a flamethrower handy. How does she think she… oh! You mean?..”

“Yeah,” Pidge nodded darkly. “The dragons. They are telepaths too, are they not? Who else would find a way to communicate with them?”

***

“Can you and Blue scan the mountain range and see where Sea is?” Keith asked when they were descending into the upper atmosphere layers.

He knew he was asking a lot of Allura: up to now Blue always showed them only a high-level topographic plan or a 3D plan. She never gave them a lot of details. And she sure as hell never searched for living beings. That, probably, was more of Green’s forte, but… well.

“For Lance’s sake?” Allura’s face appeared on the screen before Keith, firm and collected. “We certainly will!”

Keith’s felt Black’s confirmation. The leader knew the abilities of all the other lions and paladins in his pride almost better than Keith did (which Keith started to sense only recently) and was sure that Allura and Blue would be able to do it.

At this very moment Keith’s screen showed Shiro’s face instead of Allura — a call from a personal communicator came through. Judging by the background, Shiro was calling not from the bridge but from one of the many technical nooks and crannies: behind him Keith saw unfamiliar dials with raised symbols, suitable for someone without eyes.

“Keith, sorry, I know I’m distracting you right now, but I have something to ask you…”

“You want me to better control my temper, I know,” Keith tried not to spit out the words through gritted teeth. It was Shiro after all. Shiro had the right to lecture him all he wanted.

“No, that’s not it at all,” Shiro’s eyes were very serious, even sad. Keith had rarely seen his optimistic friend like that. “I’m so proud of how you’re doing now. Considering your feelings towards Lance, your grasp of the situation and the level of control are astonishing.”

Keith probably looked gobsmacked, because Shiro laughed a little.

“Yeah, you might not have noticed it yourself, but it’s obvious for everybody else. I wanted to tell you something else, that’s why I’m using a private channel. I don’t want everyone to hear this.”

“I’m listening.”

Somehow Shiro got even more somber. “Now might not be the time to be an impartial leader of Voltron. I know there are some lines you’ll never cross. But your opponents don’t need to know that.”

Keith shut his eyes.

In other words, Shiro gave him a green light for the same kind of feint Keith already pulled off with Lance when he first realized he was taken over by the moths.

“And it doesn’t have to be a bluff,” Shiro continued.

“What?!” Keith’s eyes flew open.

“I know none of you will hurt non-combatants on purpose and won’t damage any buildings where there might be children, that’s understood. But you don’t have to spare the military forces that attack you first or their industrial objects. They are no more important than Lance’s life.”

Keith swallowed around the tightness in his throat. When they initially got stuck in space and only started to adjust to their roles as defenders of the universe, Shiro gathered them all for a short meeting and said that any of them could come to him anytime to speak about any ethical problems that bothered them. He ended it in a short lecture, which did a lot towards easing Keith’s mind. Shiro said then, ‘While we do our best to keep loss of life and property at the strictest possible minimum, we’re better than our enemies. Don’t ever forget that.’

Now he changed his tune.

And, as always, it was at the moment Keith needed it the most.

He’d probably stepped over this line on the sand himself, if the situation demanded it from him. Hell, Keith wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t kill a civilian — for Lance. But the fact that Shiro realized his state of mind and eased his burden...

“Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me.”

Shiro’s face disappeared from the screen right on time: piloting Black was like a second nature at this point, but Keith still needed to pay attention during landing. The lions of Voltron descended from the skies as avenging demons. Well, Keith hoped the dragons had a suitable religion. If you give your opponents a good scare from the start, it should ease the negotiations considerably.

The paladins chose the same mountain range that led into the jungle. But not the pass at which the last battle took place (at least, the last that the paladins saw). No, now they picked a narrow valley, almost a canyon. The water-drinking trees, moths’ symbionts, didn’t grow there as it was too high above the sea level and the air was too cold. The high banks of a narrow dark river were covered by creepy fur-like plants. They’d be exactly like furs if the latter were equipped with needles that could change their position independently from each other, tracking… whatever they were tracking. Keith would say they were following the sun, if there were a sun visible through the thick layer of clouds.

The walls of the valley were dotted with black holes of caves, sometimes draped by blotches of greenery. According to Allura, they were entrances to extensive cave systems, only partially natural.

Keith didn’t want to go into the tunnels. According to Allura’s echo scanner, most of them were really narrow, and he doubted they were lit well. It wouldn’t be an easy task to find Sea there among the hostile locals.

It would be much easier to encourage the dragons to hand her over by destroying some infrastructure on the surface, as Shiro hinted.

But, unfortunately, Keith didn’t find anything that could pass for said infrastructure — or “industrial objects”, as Shiro put it.

Well, there were some signs that the mountain range harboured the whole civilization. There were too many flat and even ridges among the rocky outcrops, narrow, barely visible but clearly maintained trails; some kind of terraces, where the unfamiliar trees with silver-white bark were growing. Their bluish canopy was a sharp contrast to all the other plants, also greyish-green, same as on the lowlands.

Keith suppressed his petty desire to land Black on one of these terraces crushing the fragile trees. It would hardly matter in the long run. Most likely, he’d just leave some poor family starving.

(Keith remembered the vision of a dragon from Lance’s memory: a heap of eggs near the dying embers.)

But Keith switched off the gravitational compensators, that usually allowed Black not to sink into the dirt, and the mountains trembled when he landed. And then the world shook three more times when the rest of the lions followed.

Keith’s voice, amplified by Black and reflected from the walls of the valley, rustled the fur-like needles. “Sea! Allura and Pidge tracked down your platform signature! We know you’re here, hidden in the caves! Come out or we will force you.”

“You have a varga and a half,” Allura said coldly from the Blue lion. “After that we’ll start putting our own measures in place.”

For about a minute nothing happened. Then a strange voice suddenly asked inside Keith’s head: “And what measure are you going to undertake? You can’t even talk to the dragons. They don’t have a spoken language, your universal translators are useless. It’s wiser to give up. I’m no longer trying to kill your friend. Why do you care about the moths?”

Keith didn’t realize at first it was Sea talking to him telepathically, the same way she did in Lance’s dream. But when he did realize that, he didn’t know how to answer. His thoughts were tangled, he could barely pick up any coherent ideas in his own head. That’s what they probably meant when they talked about a lack of mental discipline. 

At last, he asked aloud, “What are you planning to do?!”

He meant it for Sea only, but he forgot to switch off the loudspeakers, so his voice again rumbled like a thunderstorm over the gloomy valley.

“Keith?” Hunk appeared on Keith’s main screen. “Why are you asking her like that? She can’t answer!”

Keith hurriedly switched over the connection to other paladins. “She can and she does. She is talking to me through my mind.”

Hunk gasped.

The voice in Keith’s head spoke again, hollow and a little sad. ‘Whatever I’m planning to do, you need not worry. Fly away, take your friend with you. The moths won’t trouble him anymore. Try to heal him without them. It might even help if you keep some moths in your own head, Black Paladin, and leave the connection between you intact.’

Keith grinded his teeth. “You’ve seen what he is like if we wake him up without the connection to the hivemind! And now you want to destroy them with the help of dragons? We could lose the only chance of bringing him back to normal!”

‘I could tell you that I don’t care, but it wouldn’t be the truth. I like all of you paladins and I honestly admire your feelings for your friend and lover. But even the moths themselves don’t know how to free him. Without them in the picture, however, you’ll be able to try and experiment. You have allies well-versed in biology and other sciences. You’ll make do.’

Keith decided to ignore that unexpected confession about liking them. Probably mind games anyway. But that gave him an idea. He forgot about the basic principle of negotiations; he should take her own position into account if he wants this to lead to something. 

“You’ll die here! If you don’t come with us, you’ll run out of oxy… I mean, methane!”

‘I knew the risks,’ Sea answered calmly. ‘My government knew representatives might have to sacrifice themselves. That’s why they sent a volunteer whose personality allowed for it. I’m ready not only to kill but to die too, if need be. That’s how we, as a race, minimize the loss of life.’

“That’s how minimizing losses looks like to you?! OK, you decided to kill off the hivemind. But did you consider how many dragons are going to be killed too? They don’t have the best history when it comes to defeating the moths.”

Sea stayed silent, but Keith had a feeling that something close to indecisiveness lurked on the other end of the fragile mental connection.

“Keith!” Now it was Allura calling to him. “I feel the quintessence moving inside the mountains! In the same way it was moving when Sea first scanned the planet, when she got ill.”

“So what does it mean?” asked Hunk.

“It probably means the dragons are listening to the mental exchange between Keith and Sea,” Pidge answered instead of Allura. Keith hoped they had a pretty good idea of what they were talking about, hearing only his side of conversation. Anyway, he was grateful they never interrupted. 

“Keith, try to convince them they are better off not listening to Sea!” Pidge added.

“How?!” Keith grasped Black’s control beams. “They don’t have a spoken language! Sea was right — without mental discipline you can’t communicate if your counterpart doesn’t understand spoken language!” 

“But you do have mental discipline!” Allura said. “You are the paladin of Black and Red lions. They don’t think in words either, do they?”

“As if I could ever really talk to them!”

“Are you not desperate enough to try now? For Lance?”

Keith closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Allura was right. The stakes had never been higher… at least, personally.

The black starry void he fell into after the battle with the Clone Shiro. Attentive, searching gaze that came from everywhere at once. “Help me!” pleaded Keith without words.

Next moment he saw himself in the stone amphitheater. The stepped rounded benches were lit with a beam of light coming from the high ceiling of the cave. The same creepy fur-like trees were circling the walls.

The amphitheater looked very old to Keith. Most of the benches cracked and were covered by moss. But this place was definitely in use: most of the seats were taken by perching dragons. Their unblinking dark blue bulging eyes were surrounding Keith in a tight circle.

One of them, an older specimen, whose dark brown hide was peppered by darker spots, spread his wings drawing attention to himself.

“Are you here to persuade us?” He asked in flawless Queen’s English. “You may try, oh war-mongering alien! Picture for us a future you want to avoid. Everything you will imagine we will see too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, I changed jobs and kinda am still freaking out about it! :) I'll try to make the next chapter quicker :) A-and there's only 6 of them left!


	15. The choice we make

The paladins were stuck in the middle of schemes and intrigues, where the stakes were not only their friend’s fate, but, probably, the very existence of two sentient species. Keith realized he should have understood this long ago.

He must keep it in mind if he wants to negotiate successfully. Maybe it’s a stupid oversight that the paladins hadn’t tried to contact the other side, but Keith thought that their burning desire to save Lance and their confusion as to what had happened to him was a valid enough excuse. They only recently started to recognize the whole extent of the problem.

Keith couldn’t help thinking: what if the moths would be able to bring Lance’s chemical experiments to their logical conclusion? He strongly suspected they could. Lance hardly had more than a beginner’s grasp of chemistry, much less of biochemistry; the moths probably learnt the concept from him and ran with it. And they were probably good runners.

There is no guarantee that if they successfully create a poison or a virus, they’d stop at extinguishing the population living in the mountains. No, they’d probably decide to exterminate dragons as a species. 

On the other hand, the dragons probably didn’t know they were fighting a hivemind, localized on several square kilometers of the jungle. If they started to burn all the moths, they’d probably wreck the planet’s ecosystem on the whole, because these stupid insects (or medusae!) are in some complex symbiotic relationships with water-drinking trees...

‘I don’t really care about the planet,’ was Keith’s brutally honest thought. ‘It may even be wiser in the long run to kill off all the moths — dragons are better as far as sentient species go! They at least have personalities, we’ll be able to talk to them… eventually. But what if destroying the moths hurts Lance?’

However, there was another part of Keith (he briefly remembered many Lances on the mindscape) that was absolutely sure: if he let vestiges of Galactic war wreak havoc on this god forsaken planet, he wouldn’t be able to call himself the Black Paladin. They promised to defend the Universe, after all. That meant defending everybody in it — even the moths.

Besides after talking to Lance in the depth of Lance’s mind; somewhere deep inside Keith started to question whether the moth’s nature was truly evil. Maybe it was just their differences, their strangeness, that made it easy to paint them as the villains and evil manipulators in this story. 

After all, Keith had been living with moths in his head for close to two quintants now and he didn’t notice any changes in himself, except being able to mind-chat. And the moths only took over Lance’s body when he was wounded and drained. Not once had the moths tried to harm him, not counting that one instance with making his heart stop; it was Keith who had threatened Lance and fought with him...

All these complex concepts and ideas rushed through Keith’s head in a jumble of mixed up thoughts and half-formed hunches; all within a fraction of a second. He really hoped the dragon couldn’t parse them. They were not shaped as words or pictures or anything, really. Just a tight knot of broken logical chains crowning the long convoluted thought process, half-buried in his subconscious.

Keith breathed in deeply and slowly breathed out. “Did I understand you right?” he asked the dragons, trying not to show his discomfort in front of their motionless hostile eyes. “I need to imagine in visual details what I want to show you, and you’ll see it?”

“That’s right,” said the spotted leader.

The dragons were much smaller than humans, about the size of a large dog (but smaller than Wolf). But they seemed much bigger now, sitting on the raised steps of the amphitheater. It made Keith feel on edge.

Shiro must have felt even worse when he was in the Arena, surrounded by eight feet tall galran military elite... 

“But you understand my speech. Why can’t I just tell you?”

“I don’t understand your question.”

Keith reminded himself that it’s not his place to discuss communication methods. He didn’t even know why the dragons could hear him in the first place! Keith was probably just imbued with the Black Lion’s quintessence. Maybe even with the quintessence of all the Voltron lions. Or, using gamer language Pidge and Lance sometimes used, Allura could unlock some ability she was given on Oriande. But it’s obvious this ability or Black Lion’s help has its own limits, just like altean translation technology. The fact that the dragons don’t have a spoken language probably doesn’t help.

OK, so now he just had to simplify the task for the ‘translator’. Let’s think it all through from the beginning as simply and logically as possible.

Keith concentrated and imagined Sea’s lifeboat. Pidge tracked its trajectory and also showed Keith the estimated image of this vessel. Neither she nor Keith were really interested in how the thing looked when they discussed it, so Keith glanced at it for maybe half a tick. But it was enough for his military trained memory to get the picture. Now it was easy for him to imagine

He meticulously created a message: a bulky space pod makes a hard landing on the plateau in the mountains, plowing dirt with its rounded nose. Then Sea throws away the transparent cap, and the dragons flock to her...

Keith’s mental picture suddenly changed: instead of a crowd of identical dark-green dragons he saw a small unit of five. Their necks were adorned with bright gleaming jeweled pendants. Keith thought it was strange, he never noticed any necklaces on the dragons...

When he thought of it, the picture changed again. The jewels — which seemed to be small amethysts or topazes, Keith didn’t know much about gemstones, but they were faintly pale blue — became much duller, as if somebody had switched off the backlight.

Keith realized the collective consciousness of the dragons corrected him, showing him their versions of events. By highlighting the gems, the dragons probably wanted to show that it was not a shapeless crowd meeting Sea but an organized group, possibly military authorities. Their pendants were showing their ranks.

After that Keith had to take a risk.

He didn’t know what Sea told the dragons and what she planned. It was logical to assume she was going to tell them about the braincore of the moths, he discussed it with the rest of the paladins and with Shiro. If somebody was to take out the brain, it would probably be a very hard blow for the moths..

But how can one take out a mass of flying insects? They’d just fly away to later gather in the other part of the forest. Or maybe something ties them to the broken lifepod? Well, whatever it is, they surely can untie it!

So here Keith rolled a movie in his own head.

He imagined dragons flying above the grey jungle in perfect V formations, on the high altitude the moths can’t reach. He imagined them diving towards the clearing, hidden in the forest, at the very center of the moths’ hivemind, spitting the streams of fire and dropping the sacks of their forest-burning acids.

Keith tried to depict the lawn without any details, in case Sea had yet to tell the dragons about them. But he was very meticulous in imagining the moths with color-coded wings, imagined them scattering in all directions at once, hiding between the trees. He imagined new streams of moths appearing from behind the trees, each new batch more colourful and different than the last; he hoped to convey the idea of moths being very successful in genetically modifying themselves. He also imagined the moths colliding with the dragons, with the latter falling down dead on first contact.

Then Keith imagined the dragons’ mountain valley before his inner eye. He added the moths, that somehow flew up the rocky outcrops — he had no idea, if they could do it; if they hadn’t gone up the mountains before, there was probably some natural factor restricting them on the lowlands. But if the moths started to create different subspecies of themselves with the help of Lance’s haphazard treasury of human knowledge, they’d probably overcome this obstacle too.

For the most impact, Keith imagined this new strain of moths with black wings and a white dragon skull ruggedly painted on them; he remembered how their skulls look from Lance’s dream. He also imagined how these black moths crawl into the cave tunnels. He didn’t have the slightest idea how these holes looked from inside, but it was not rocket science to imagine very small, barely visible insects creeping along the roughly hewn walls, flying to the very first dragon they see. And this very first dragon also falling dead...

“You’ll lose,” Keith said aloud, although he had no idea how well the dragons understood his spoken words and if they understood them at all. He knew that Black somehow made at least part of his meaning come across. “If you start destroying moths, you’ll lose.”

The elder tilted his head like a bird to look at Keith. He probably didn’t need to do that, his bulging eyes should have had almost circular field of vision. He probably wanted to pressure Keith, or at least tried to.

Keith started to see pictures in his head he didn’t imagine.

He saw dragons flying above the forest, very high, much higher than the moths could ever reach. He even got the impression they were using some kind of aid, something akin to simple planes, but it seemed that whoever was transmitting this picture into his brain tried to mask the vehicles as much as possible.

He saw the dragons dropping many thousands of their chemical weapons on his forest, and watched the trees crumple, disappearing like burned thin plastic. He saw the pictures of dragon cave systems, their entrances fumigated with some kind of special smoke to repel the moths, the air and light holes covered with fine mesh...

In other words, the elder (or the dragons collectively) showed him: we’ll prevail. Whatever you say, we, dragons, are stronger than the moths.

Suddenly the Black Lion rose from deep inside of Keith and roared at the elder, with such force that the dragon almost fell from his perch.

Keith had a bizarre impression that a scowling lion head really emerged from his chest, or that his own head became the lion’s, just for a second. In the strange mental space he was currently in everything seemed possible.

“So you’re threatening us,” the elder said slowly. “Why? Why is it so important to you?”

Even if Keith didn’t want to answer this question, the picture appeared in his head on its own volition. He saw Lance, pale, motionless, covered with Coran’s sensors, bugs under his eyes… And right after that, Lance again, but this time laughing as in that ocean dream Keith saw, with crystals of salt sparkling on his eyelashes.

This image garnered a strange reaction. Suddenly a picture of eggs warming in the ashes near a heat source appeared in Keith’s mind again. It looked similar to what Lance saw in the head of the dying dragon during their brief mental contact.

This time Keith was not seeing it in someone else’s memory, but directly transmitted to his brain; no degrees of separation. Maybe this was why the scene looked more life-like and emotional to him. Even though Keith was never a fan of cave decor and open fire always looked to him like a major hazard, thanks to his father, Keith suddenly realized he was aching to get there, near a hearth, among the dragons bodies, being loved and cherished. For a moment he was sure he was waited for, cared for and accepted; like in the brief moment when forming Voltron or before making the strongest blow — only without battle rage. No painful emotional peaks, no draining adrenaline rush, just sure and steady warmth.

Then he briefly saw the same ill-looking trees growing on the stone terraces, only they were laden with red fruit. He also saw herds of furry creatures, grazing grass on the bottom of the valley, and dragons, diving at them from above.

All this was almost immediately drawn into a sense of hunger and disorientation. Keith had a feeling he had been starving for a very long time, maybe for several weeks. He knew hunger pangs in his childhood, when he spent almost a year with a family who fostered kids only to get allowances. Fortunately, he almost forgot about it.

But here it was again, the very feeling! He wanted to shrink into himself. He felt himself small and insignificant, having no voice, with only hopelessness ahead of him. He didn’t know then he’d soon meet Shiro who’ll show him a way out of that nightmare.

A new wave of hopelessness hit him, when he saw many eggs thrown from the cliff, their yolks tainting the rocks above.

Keith didn’t even realise his cheeks were wet.

“You don’t have enough food,” he murmured. “And you don’t have any birth control, so you have to control the size of your clutches by other means… And it’s very hard on you. That’s why you can’t back down either.”

The elder didn’t confirm or deny Keith’s new understanding. Probably the concept of birth control was difficult for getting through mental imagery.

“But that’s not a long-term solution!” Keith went on. “Sooner or later the demographic pressure will be too much!”

He wasn’t a genius like Pidge or Hunk, but he did study at school, and he knew about overpopulation. Garrison was good at beating social sciences into thick students’ skulls. Iverson was teaching this subject, and he had one and very efficient cure for bad grades — running laps around the stadium while yelling answers to test questions aloud. If you made a mistake, you had to run another lap.

Keith tried to imagine it like a movie, for the dragons’ sake. Let’s assume they were successful, they destroyed the jungle, they grew their own trees and their herds multiplied… They were herding animals, right? More new dragons appeared. And more. And even more. And eventually there were no more jungles to burn down. What now?

But the images seemed pale and unconvincing even to Keith’s own mental eye. He felt Hunk would do this part better.

But he saw another series of pictures instead, much brighter, even painfully so. Keith realized they were coming not from the elder but from another dragon in the amphitheater. He saw Lance in them, but recognized him only by his brown skin, everything else including his facial features were distorted. He saw this ‘Lance’ laying on the makeshift cot on the bridge, saw four human-shaped figures around him. Then he saw Lance standing up and hugging a person closest to him.

Then he saw four lions flying away. This last picture was shown as true to life as possible, dragon’s imagination even replayed the switch of the engines in the upper layer of the atmosphere.

Then Keith once again saw dragons diving down on the forest.

“So you mean,” Keith said slowly, not quite sure what he had just seen, “you want to know if we would leave you alone provided you help us heal Lance?” 

A tentative agreement. They seem to understand his speech better and better.

“Can you heal him?”

As an answer Keith was shown a group of dragons colliding with the swarm of moths. Suddenly he had a close up view of a dragon’s nostril, in which a moth crawled. The dragon in question barely changed course before he returned to the previous trajectory and breathed fire on the other moths.

“Quiznack! I should’ve known!” Keith hit his open palm with his fist. “I’d been wondering how come the moths can’t enslave the dragons?”

“Do you agree?” asked either the elder, or another dragon, Keith couldn’t be sure.

Keith shook in frustration at his own stupidity. 

He needed to decide right now.

He needed to decide if he should leave two sentient species alone, agreeing with the fact that either the moths will destroy the dragons or the dragons will irreparably ruin this planet’s environment with whatever consequences it may bring… or if he should just come to terms with the fact that Lance would never be himself again.

What a choice.


	16. None of this is your fault

He wouldn’t wake up, and he wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t.

Dreams were flying past him like wisps of cotton candy or colourful soap bubbles. Their house at the outskirts of Matanses, bright and canary-yellow; his mother, angry, with a plastic slipper in her hand (as a kid Lance was terrified of this slipper, but now even this memory felt pleasant); his nephews playing in the foamy tide; Nadia found a starfish; there are other stars overhead, the real ones, bright, blue, and white, and yellow, and red, the starry carpet as wide as the sky; his father is rolling out a sleeping bag and says “Lie down, we’re going to learn the constellations!”; Keith snorts and immediately pretends he doesn’t think a joke is funny; some girl — what was her name again? — smiles and smoothes a lock of hair on Lance’s head; Keith frowns and looks at Lance sullenly; Allura is leaning towards the control panel with a very determined look; Keith, looking very suspicious, nose wrinkled, tastes food on an alien function, it’s so cute; Pidge wrinkles her nose too, engrossed in some complicated task; Keith looks very goal-oriented, fighting six droids at once on the training deck, his hair in the low ponytail; Hunk is tinkering with a dismembered Galra robot and whines about all the food he misses; Shiro puts his hand on Lance’s elbow and shows him the movement once again, very patiently; Keith smiles, holding Lance’s hand in both of his... 

He wants to see them all so much right now!

Then it becomes cold, empty and lonely. Someone is screaming. Lance has a feeling he is falling from somewhere high. Someone begs about something, grasping the edge of someone else’s clothes. It’s definitely a dream, possibly a nightmare. Lance is better off not remembering it.

Then Lance wakes up, as if emerging from dark water, but instead of the sun he sees the moon.

***

At first he didn’t even realize he woke up. Everything around him was dull and murky. His head felt like mush.

But soon he realized it was reality, not a dream. Lance would never dream of such a gloomy room with a low ceiling and iron walls, where everything looked so tough, functional and inconvenient, as if it had been built by blind dwarfs. He even thought briefly he might be in some experimental prison run by Galra or the Druids, but then faces of Shiro and Coran loomed over him, too lean and too tired.

They both looked much older than Lance remembered. Shiro was completely grey.

‘How long have I been sleeping?’ Lance thought.

Oh, quiznack! It was not Shiro, it was his evil clone! The last time Lance saw him, he was rushing from the door of the Castle’s bridge, while Lance himself was rolling on the floor in pain.

Lance would’ve jumped, but for some reason he didn’t feel worried. On the contrary, he felt the soothing wave of comfort coming from somewhere. It was very familiar, as if Hunk hugged him with both hands on his shoulders.

Then he felt another wave of comfort and another… Each new wave felt different. Like Allura… And Keith?..

Lance tried to turn his head, but it wouldn’t move. He couldn’t control his muscles.

“Where…” he wanted to ask where was everybody, but could barely form the first word. His mouth felt parched as a desert.

“Don’t worry, you’re on our temporal base,” said Shiro in an eerily calm voice.

Another wave of comfort rolled over him, now with a hint of Pidge’s teasing.

It seemed that wherever everybody else was, they didn’t want Lance worrying either.

“Do you need water, my boy?” asked Coran, also very gently. Lance never heard him speaking in this tone of voice.

He heard Coran sound sad a couple of times, when Lance got him to talk about Altea or Coran’s perished family. But he never heard him soft. The royal advisor never swayed from his dramatic enthusiasm even in the moments of catastrophe. 

“Damn,” thought Lance, “I’m in really bad shape, huh?”

He suddenly remembered they didn’t have the Castle anymore, that they blew it up. It meant they didn’t have medical pods either. But as soon as the beginning of fear came, new waves of calmness rolled over him again.

Hey, not that he isn’t grateful, but what the hell is going on?

“Yes, water, please,” he could barely say.

Coran brought the water — not a plastic pack Lance got used to in the Castle, but a metal bottle. He helped Lance lift his head and gave him the straw. The water faintly tasted of chemicals. The best taste in the world.

“Where is everybody?” Lance asked at last, spitting out the straw.

At this point, the worst possible scenarios started to unravel in his head. He didn’t appreciate the hollow feeling of emptiness and anxiety inside, the feeling that comforting waves tried to assuage, not quite successfully.

“Please, don’t worry…” Coran began.

Screw all of you!

“The more you say things like that,” Lance tried to speak lightly, “the more I start to think there is something to worry about.”

“There really isn’t t,” Shiro said firmly. “Everything is under control.”

“Aren’t you an evil clone?” Lance asked suspiciously.

“Only sort of. I'm some of him and some of original me, it's a long story,” Shiro said.

Lance once again felt himself being buried under suffocating, unnatural calmness. It seemed forced, as if someone invisible was whispering into his ear, using his friends’ voices: “Stay positive! Think happy thoughts!” 

If that wasn’t creepy, Lance didn’t know what was.

Lance pulled free from the sticky mental net with all his might. The effort was psychological, but it fed a physical movement. Lance sat up on a hospital cot (or something like it; he even saw an IV stand with a tube going to his vein!).

He saw his four friends lying on the floor near the cot, two at each side, on their backs, with arms alongside their bodies. Allura and Hunk had pillows under their heads. Pidge and Keith were covered by blankets. Right, that’s because they get chilly when they sleep, especially Pidge. 

“What the hell…” Lance almost started screaming but changed it for a dramatic whisper, because he had a wild thought: what if they were just sleeping? Suppose, they’d been saving Lance all this time, got really tired, and now they just needed some rest. It would also explain why Lance felt like shit at the moment, because the thing they had saved him from obviously was something major, judging from the efforts spent. 

“Calm down, Lance…” Coran put both hands on Lance’s shoulders, as if trying to make him stay in place.

“Stop it!” Now it was just too much. Lance couldn’t help yelling. “What the quiznack is going on?!”

“Everything is alright,” said a female voice, faintly familiar. “You were just telepathically captured by sentient insects, you lost your ability to maintain emotional and mental balance without help. So the other paladins are helping you. They have to do that in a trance state, at least at first because it’s very difficult and they have no skills.”

Lance looked around and found the owner of the voice, a pretty golden haired Altean that Keith brought with him. Romelle was her name, wasn’t it? And where is Krolia, Keith’s mom? She was with him too, or did Lance imagine it?

“They are not insects,” Lance said without thinking. “They are closer to medusae.”

And just like that, he remembered.

***

Keith tore himself away from the cozy cocoon of a dream-like trance because Lance was hurting.

Or, rather, he was pushed out. It was a unanimous decision.

They felt the prickles of panic almost immediately. They realized Lance was talking to Shiro and Coran, and that both tried to comfort him. They did what they could themselves. But it didn’t seem to work as planned: Lance’s presence in their collective mind exploded with such strong pain, imbued with all the hues of desperation, that they just couldn’t stand it any longer. 

Then they quickly made a decision: someone needed to comfort Lance, it needed to be Keith.

Keith proposed Hunk, but his opinion was immediately drowned in the collective voice of the other three paladins.

A moment before Keith woke up, Hunk’s thoughts snuck into Keith’s mind, like a brief hug. Go on, you can do it, I believe in you. 

And the honey syrup of their combined dream dissolved into a headache, made of the bridge’s dim lighting and Lance’s sobs.

“This is my fault!” he cried. “Let me go! You sons of bitches, let me go!”

Shiro and Coran were holding him, not letting him reach the control panel. The screens displayed the shards of strange landscape: a round clearing in the depths of the jungle, the ruins of a lifepod, clean and empty of moths. But Keith saw a piece of cloth in the tree branches surrounding the clearing and a big woven basket — or what’s left of it — on the edge of a patch of grass.

“That’s an air balloon that crashed on the trees,” Keith realized.

He didn’t watch dragons storming the moths’ citadel — after all, the paladins promised not to interfere. But he knew that the air balloon was the dragons’ big secret. It allowed them to fly higher than on their own.

“Lance, please, stop!” Shiro had to use a painful hold, locking Lance’s arm behind his back, but Lance still stood on his toes trying to throw himself onto the control panel, as if he didn’t care that he could break his own elbow. “It’s not your fault, Lance!”

“This is all a tragic coincidence, my boy!” Coran yelled.

Keith didn’t know what Lance was going to do with the control panel. Maybe he thought the station had engines he could use to land on the planet. Or maybe he wanted to launch a shuttle… which could work, if their only shuttle (the one Sea had used) wasn’t sitting down there in the mountains with its tanks empty. Maybe something got wired wrong in Lance’s head and he thought he could crawl into the grey jungle through the screens.

Keith wouldn’t be surprised with either.

The lingering effects of the trance made it difficult to move, almost like underwater. It was even harder to pick the right moment, because Lance was constantly thrashing, and Shiro and Coran were in Keith’s way. But still, Keith managed to get close to Lance, cupping his neck with one hand and his waist with another, feeling the firm warm muscles beneath his palms.

“Lance, calm down! Everything is alright!”

Keith thought that his voice seemed frustrated, not gentle, but Lance somehow really quieted, unlike with Shiro and Coran.

“Keith?” he murmured. “You… you are not asleep, are you?”

“Not anymore.”

The four of them all froze, as if teetering on the edge of a cliff. Lance was shivering.

“You have to understand,” he suddenly said. “You really should understand! It was all me.”

“I understand,” Keith said. “This was you. But but it’s not your fault.”

Lance’s knees melted and he hung onto his three friends like a dead weight.

Under ordinary circumstances any of them would easily hold Lance up even alone, but now Shiro had only one arm, Keith was still sluggish after his dream-state, and Coran was much weaker than Altean women and was standing in an uncomfortable position. So the poorly propped group lost its balance, wavered and dropped on the floor — Lance kneeled in the center, Keith behind him (only a united Galran fleet led by Lotor and Zarkon would make him let go of his friend now), Shiro and Coran on either side of them.

Lance was crying. He wept ugly, spreading tears on his cheeks by the base of his palms, as if he was afraid of touching his face with his fingers.

“Why did you agree?” he whimpered. “Why? They’ll kill each other... All because I started a fight! Because I couldn’t think up something better!”

“They won’t kill each other,” Keith said soothingly. “The dragons’ attack on moths flopped. Their command center was practically empty. Somehow they knew about the attack.”

“Of course they knew!” Lance breathed out angrily. “Because of me! And I knew it from you! We were both part of the same hivemind! And now everything is… What am I going to do?! How am I supposed to come back like this?!”

He crouched on his knees, hitting the floor with both his fists. The hit was strong, Keith saw that the raised edges on the metal floor scraped the skin on the side of his palm, but Lance didn’t even flinch.

“We’re still parts of the same whole,” Keith tried to soothe him. “Don’t you feel it?”

Lance was crying.

“Lance! Listen to Red! We’re together! We’re still together, that’s the main thing! We will pull through!”

After some time Lance’s sobs quieted down. He was still crying, but Coran was ready with a new flask of water. When you have to sip water through a straw, you can’t cry properly, and Lance did want to drink very much, so he had to stop crying. Keith was sure without Coran Voltron would have surrendered to Zarkon ages ago, you don’t need to be a fortune teller to predict that.

Right now Keith felt almost everything that Lance felt, but couldn’t do anything about it. The only thing he could do is hug Lance, plaster himself to his back and hope it is enough.

“Lance,” Shiro began, when Lance got himself more or less under control, “do you remember everything through Keith’s memory? Everything that had happened here?”

“I have no idea,” Lance was still fighting tears. “How can I know if I have some pieces missing? This is like… a really colourful, bright dream. Or a very distant memory. As if it happened ten years ago instead of yesterday.”

“Then try to remember,” Shiro insisted, shaking his shoulder. “Remember, what Hunk, Allura, Keith and Pidge were discussing! Remember how much they wanted to bring you back! Remember, why Keith made this decision!”

Keith felt Lance didn’t want to remember. To be more exact, he didn’t have enough strength to do so. He was too tired to think, too tired to feel. The only thing he wanted was to curl on the floor and just lay like that forever.

So Keith closed his eyes, found the very thin, but firm anchor chain inside himself, his link to the others.

“Guys! Red, Black! Please, help me!”

The power came as a warm rainbow bridge under his feet. And through that bridge Keith pushed into Lance his own memory, making it as bright as he could. He still remembered his own shame and confusion, how he tried to hide them from the dragons — yes, I’m a self-assured Voltron paladin, I just need some time to think...

He was given some time to think.

A very short time, to be sure.

***

Keith surfaced from his strange trance or lucid dream inside Black’s cockpit, catching the tail end of Hunk’s words on the team channel. “Yellow says not to touch him, he is alright! I don’t know, guys, he doesn’t seem alright to me!”

“I second that. He’s been silently staring at one spot for fifteen doboshes!”

“Blue agrees with Yellow, Pidge! She says, we need to trust Keith and Black.”

“Huh, if these ancient kitties gave us more info, it would be much appreciated… Oh, look, he’s back! Keith, are you okay?”

“Keith!”

Keith blinked several times. His head was ringing, but on the whole he didn’t feel too bad. He raised his helmet’s visor and rubbed at his eyes.

“I managed to contact the dragons telepathically,” he tried to say it as neutral as possible. “They offered us a deal. A way to heal Lance on the condition we won’t meddle in their war with the moths.”

A short silence followed.

“We accept that,” Pidge said in a very sure voice.

After that everybody started talking at once. Allura was reminding them that the moths had biological weapons, and that if they wouldn’t step in, the deaths of thousands if not millions of dragons would be on them. Hunk was insisting that the dragons were going to hurt their own planet more than the Galra hurt Balmera’s. 

“Don’t you remember how awful Earth was in the middle of the twenty first century, do you want to be guilty of that?!” Keith, much for his own shame, was yelling at the both of them, “you are right, but can’t you understand it’s Lance?! That there is Lance on the other side of the scales?!”

“We understand!” Hunk said. “But we are Voltron after all! We’ve been through worse! We’ve beat an Empire, don’t you think we can deal with dumb insects! I think we’ll find another way to heal Lance, now that we know such methods exists! We can fly to another mountain range, find another dragon tribe, tell them about our problem — and that’s it!”

“Or we could try to solve the problem through the connection with the lions one more time,” Allura agreed. “We haven’t fully explored this option yet. I’m sure Red will help us if we ask him nicely! Keith, Lance is extremely dear to me, as you know, but we, as Defenders of the Universe, cannot succumb to something so unethical!”

Pidge waited for Allura to take her breath and wedged in. “I think that, as Defenders of the Universe, it’s none of our business. We should draw the line somewhere.”

“What do you mean?!” Hunk asked indignantly. “Two sentient species are ready to make each other extinct, and you think it’s not Voltron’s business.”

“What would you call a military force that starts to meddle in someone’s affairs for their own good?” Pidge asked. “I believe the word is ‘invaders’. Do I need to remind you that nobody here, on this planet, actually asked us for help? On the contrary, they asked many times for us to leave them alone!”

“But that’s a completely different thing!” Hunk said. “We’re just trying to help!”

“Lance already tried.”

“Lance is not at fault! He was unconscious when they rumbled through his brain and took everything they liked!”

“Yes, but however you look at this, Lance introduced such concepts as war, tactics, strategy, weapon development! They didn’t have them before! Lance also gave them a real consciousness. The moths now have a part of his personality, including, most likely, his readiness to sacrifice himself for the ones he loves and commit to things without thinking them through! If you crashed on this planet instead of him, the moths would have probably hunkered themselves down in an underground citadel and tried to establish a dialogue with the dragons!”

Hunk seemed to start to argue, but caught himself. “OK, solid logic, but…”

“No buts!” Pidge said sternly. “And now they have a connection to Keith and his temper without an ability to control his emotions! Let’s just imagine in this situation we took it upon ourselves to smooth everything over. Are we going to spend several years doing that? When there are bands of galran marauders roaming free around the space, and nobody knows what happened to Earth in the three years we were not around!”

Keith thought about it. Let’s assume they decided to intervene, for example, by threatening the dragons that they’d bury their dwellings under an avalanche, and the moths with burning their jungle. What if they’ll really have to follow through onthis threat?

Where is that line in the sand? Maybe, that’s the point Zarkon started with. First you make justice as you see fit, then you mine ore from a super-dangerous comet so that to give your planet more military power (naturally, for most noble purposes!), then you dismiss the possibility of an armageddon and lie to your friends to save your wife, then you become a zombie...

Or, on the contrary, what if Keith becomes like Zarkon if he betrays his duty as the Defender of the Universe to save the man he loves?

“Quiznack, guys!” Pidge snapped. “There is no good choice here, only a bad and a worse one! But let’s think about it like that: suppose we decide to interfere, and then we get Lance to wake up, how will we stop him from taking the moths’ side again? We can’t be impartial mediators in this scenario!” 

“I trust Lance!” Hunk exclaimed.

“And Lance seems to trust the moths!”

Keith inhaled. Exhaled. Being with the Blades taught him many things, combat being the least significant of them. Now he tried to analyze pros and cons the same way they did when deciding on the validity of a battle plan. “OK, so what we have ‘for’ interfering, is a possibility to prevent more lives being lost. What I see against is as follows. First, we don’t know if our intervention is going to cut down the casualties or blow them up. Second, we have limited time. Third, our capabilities are also limited: lions are too big to use them as weapons in a guerilla warfare. Forth, the ethics of the situation is unclear.”

“Even if we decide against interfering, I’m strongly opposed to Voltron accepting an ultimatum if there is another possibility,” Allura said. “Let’s fly to the mountain range that is on the other side of the continent. Remember the map?”

At this moment the long-range comm channel opened up, and the four screens in four lions showed Coran’s anxious face.

“Paladins!” he exclaimed. “The medical pod lit up the signal for low power! I started to transfer Lance to intravenous nutrition and oxygen support, but I’m not sure I can do that safely enough for a human! I don’t know how long we can keep him like that without permanent damage!”

“Thank you, Coran,” Keith nodded to him, trying to sound calm while totally panicking inside. “Don’t worry, we’ve already found a way out. We’ll hurry up.”

He looked at the other paladins.

Everybody nodded at the same time. Nobody argued anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only four chapters, including the epilogue, to go, and I'll try to do them ASAP, but both me and my awesome beta crumbcake have SO MUCH IRL crop up, omg, it's not even funny.


	17. All for one and one for all

Keith found Wolf near the hatch into Sea’s “prison cell”.

The dragons released her — or, rather, evicted — when Keith posed it as a condition of paladins’ non-interference. The reason for his action was not because he wanted to protect the swamp planet from the Doomglomer; according to Coran, the amount of methane she had could last her only about three days, no more. She wouldn’t be able to do much damage anyway.

Keith just felt sorry for her.

Too often he couldn’t save his fellow Blades who sacrificed themselves for the sake of this or that mission. And whatever else Sea was, she was on a mission first and foremost. She considered this mission noble, and it was not her fault that it contradicted the Paladins’ interests. 

Come to think of it, nothing that happened so far was anybody’s fault. Everybody tried to do what’s best — the moths, the dragons, Lance, Sea, Keith and the paladins...

Sensing Keith, Wolf raised his head and half-whined, half growled. He was glad to see his friend, but wanted Keith to realize he didn’t approve of his decision to get the enemy aboard the station again.

However clever Wolf was, he couldn’t understand the concept of noble motives that led to less noble actions.

“You don’t have to guard her, you know,” Keith said, sitting down on the floor at Wolf’s side with his ankles crossed. “There is no point.”

Wolf cocked his head at Keith as if to say: you’ve let her escape once and now you want to do that again?

“This time she has no vehicle and nowhere to run.”

“And no reason to,” Sea’s muffled voice said from behind the hatch. “But you didn’t need to save me, Black Paladin. On my homeworld I’ll probably be executed anyway. Or sentenced to life in prison.”

Keith’s hand stilled on Wolf’s scruff. “What for?”

“I tried to kill a sentient being. I provoked a battle between other sentient beings. It’s a capital crime under our laws.”

“But you did it because of your government’s orders!”

“Our government is not united. Not everybody agrees with Warm Touch. Some of us think the end doesn’t justify the means.” 

Keith’s hands grasped the dark fur tighter.

“Do you want to stay with us, then?” he asked, frustrated. “Hunk could probably put together some ammonia synthesizer…”

“What kind of life would that be? No, you saved me from a slow death on the surface of that planet and I don’t want to relive it. I’ll take my chances at home. Maybe life in prison is not so bad. Besides, I want to see my parents once more. Especially my dad.”

Keith felt as if something cut into his heart.

He felt Pidge’s warm but breezy presence inside his soul, together with Hunk’s logical and soothing thoughts. There should be consequences. Sea violated her own laws, Earth’s laws and probably Altean laws too, leaving alone Galran ones. Let her indeed be judged by the court of her peers. That’s only fair.

Voltron should have lines they wouldn’t overstep either, after all.

Wolf pushed his big head into Keith’s shoulder: why did you stop scratching, continue!

That helped too. Wolf was warm and loyal.

“Let’s go,” Keith said to him. “Enough sitting here. I want to introduce you to Lance properly.”

***

After Lance more or less recovered, he adamantly refused to even try connecting with Red. Keith could understand that. After what happened, he, too, would be unwilling. What if Red really wouldn’t accept Lance?

But Lance clearly also felt uncomfortable just sitting on the bridge looking at the empty screens (they switched off the feed from the planet). Keith felt it. The fact that there were Allura, Pidge, and Hunk still lying side by side on the floor, like sardines in a can, also didn’t help. Coran and Shiro also felt Lance’s awkwardness and tried to give him space, which was quite a feat because of the general lack of space. Keith thought their efforts were too obvious, too emphatic, and therefore unnatural. When Keith brought Wolf (or when Wolf brought Keith back to the bridge), Coran was telling some convoluted story from his youth, and Shiro listened with exaggerated interest, asking polite questions.

Only Romelle could keep her cool around Lance. She was embroidering her sleeveless jacket with a complex floral ornament, using thin wires she found somewhere on the station. Keith hoped they weren’t taken from a critical system.

Keith knew Romelle cared for Lance — even if only because Allura and Coran cared for him, and she was very close to the other two Alteans — but she was hardly as worried.

He kind of envied her. He also sympathized with Shiro and Coran, because he was in the same boat. His decision to bring Wolf was partly dictated by his own inability to maintain a calm facade. 

Fortunately, Wolf decided to cooperate and play the part of a cute distraction.

When they entered, Lance, who was sitting on his cot and massaging his right hand with his left one, glanced at them with a spark of interest.

“Ah, the very shiny space wolf!” he cheered. “I didn’t have a chance to look at him before! Mmm… will he bite my head off if I call him a good boy?”

Keith was a little worried that Wolf would growl at Lance again, but still smiled. “Try it.”

Lance sighed. “OK, how about… whozza good boy? Who is so cute? You are so cute!” To Keith’s surprise, Wolf came to Lance and put his head on his lap. Lance brightened considerably and expertly started to scratch Wolf underneath his chin. “You are a good boy, arent ya? Yes, you are, whozza poochiest cutest fluffiest wolfiest cosmic cutie? That’s you too, yes, that’s you too!”

Shiro and Coran exchanged glances. Shiro was apparently trying not to laugh. Keith felt only relief, so immense and all-encompassing it didn’t really leave any room for other feelings. He was afraid that nothing was going to be good enough to break through Lance’s apathy. But his “cute distraction” plan was, apparently, enough.

He supposed he could feel jealous (for both of them), but he left that for later.

“What’s your name?” asked Lance, still seemingly talking to Wolf. “I’m sure you had the coolest space name on this side of the Milky Way!”

“He doesn’t have one.,” Keith said. “We just call him Wolf.”

“Just Wolf?! For the best good boy ever?! That’s practically blasphemy!”

“He’ll tell me his name when he is ready.”

Lance giggled, then started to laugh full-heartedly, to the point of almost tearing up. Keith felt a pang of fear that it was the beginning of hysteria, but Lance quickly calmed down, and Wolf didn’t look distressed, still letting Lance pet and coo over him.

Suddenly Keith remembered Hunk tried to give Wolf a name. He said “Cosmo” fitted nicely. But at the time Keith cut him off, the only thing on his mind being the search for Lance, he couldn’t even think of anything else. Hunk’s feelings were visibly hurt but he let it slide.

“I missed you so much,” said Lance seemingly out of nowhere. “I missed all of you guys.” His fingers clenched the black fur convulsively. “Only… you shouldn’t have saved me.”

Keith remembered Sea’s words: “You needn’t have saved me.” Oh no you don’t!

“Don’t you dare!” he said aloud. “How can you, after everything… you did remember! You saw it with our own eyes!” 

“Yeah, right, I saw,” Lance looked straight at Keith. “Pidge also thought it was my fault. If it had been Hunk in my place…”

“If it were Hunk in your place, he wouldn't hold it down for three years in a symbiosis with the quiznacking hivemind!” Keith almost yelled. “And I wouldn't be able to do it either! Maybe Pidge would, or Allura, but can you imagine what the moths would turn into if they got their consciousness from one of them?”

Lance leaned back, distancing himself from Keith. Wolf whimpered.

“And what did I turn into?” Lance spat out bitterly. “Romelle got it right, I was damaged,” Romelle protested, but Lance seemingly didn’t hear her. “It’s like being mentally ill. I couldn’t live without symbiosis with the moth, and now I can’t live without you guys sustaining me in your sleep, which for you I’m sure is worse than prison…”

Keith growled.

“Keith, please calm down…” Shiro began.

But Keith already crossed the distance between him and Lance and Wolf in two steps and hugged them both.

“You know where we need to go,” he whispered to Wolf.

So they disappeared from the bridge to find themselves in a completely different place.

***

At first Lance didn’t realize where they teleported to.

The place seemed familiar, but only barely, as if he saw it in a dream. It smelled familiar too — like ozone, metal and a faint floral aroma, that closely followed any Altean magic.

At the same time, it was dark and empty, and the air seemed stale, as if it was saturated with loneliness and sadness, and Lance immediately felt himself too small for his own body. Or as if his body was too big for only Lance.

It was an increasingly familiar feeling, too.

Heart beating high in his throat, Lance briefly panicked that this familiar feeling of hopelessness would now swallow him, throw him into a black abyss where he wouldn’t be able to control himself.

But red lights flared up, calming the rising uneasiness. He saw the screens, the pilot chairs — it was Red lion’s cockpit, and now it seemed strange that he didn’t recognize it at first. How could he? He felt comforted, warm, like sitting beside a fire, lit at night at the seashore...

“Red!” Lance grasped his hair. “Keith, I told you I don’t want that now!”

While raising his hands, Lance accidentally grazed Wolf. The beast snorted, clearly offended, and stepped aside, looking at Lance with electric yellow eyes. A scary creature, if you look at him objectively.

Well, Lance was a scary creature in his own right now.

Damn, Keith — and the others — saw moths crawling out of Lance’s nose and mouth! How can they treat him as a person after that?!

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Keith was stroking Lance’s face and hair, and at any other moment Lance would be basking in this long-awaited affection, but right now he was almost tearing up. 

Not because Red didn’t accept him — on the contrary.

Red was the last person — or an entity, or whatever — Lance would expect any kind of sympathy from. He was sure the lion barely tolerated him, and even then only to support the team. Allura did say that the common goal was paramount for him. So, since only Keith fitted Black and Blue found a better candidate, Red grudgingly agreed to put up with Lance.

Red never gave Lance a reason to doubt this conclusion. He often undermined Lance’s attempts at a little R&R, he sabotaged some of his orders, he barely even let Lance control the speed...

That was why Lance didn’t want to go to Red right away. He was absolutely sure the lion wouldn’t accept him now, maybe wouldn’t even tolerate him in the cockpit. Lance felt he wouldn’t be able to endure this rejection right now. 

But the only thing he felt was sincere compassion. And… understanding.

Very belatedly Lance realized that the feeling of a body that was too big for him alone and the empty feeling inside belonged to the lion.

The worst thing about being possessed by the moths wasn’t the fact that the insects lived inside of him. The worst thing was that Lance remembered this feeling very vividly and liked it. When moths crawl inside your throat and nose channel, it feels good. Pleasant. It makes you absolutely certain in the world that surrounds you and your place in it.

“You are... “ Lance murmured. “You are like me, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” Keith asked suspiciously, pausing in his ministrations.

Maybe he was afraid Lance’s mental health would deteriorate further. Lance was afraid of the same thing, actually.

“Not you. Red. He feels empty, too.”

“Do you still feel it?” Keith gulped. “I thought, we did everything to fix it…”

“What did you do exactly?” Lance asked. “I tried to remember it from your memory, but the more recent it is, the less coherent.”

Keith sighed. “Pidge said the solution was really simple and she should have figured it out by herself. She called it an easy logic conundrum. Sea told us that the dragons have collective minds, but that they think in small groups, not in hives. And that everybody in that small group still had their own personality.”

“And?” Lance still didn’t get it.

“An individual mind cannot resist a hive. But a collective one can.”

“But I’m not a collective mind! We are not!” Lance cried out.

And stopped himself.

Because at this very moment he was enveloped by invisible warmth, the feeling of his friends. Hunk’s compassion and slight sarcasm (“Honestly, man, you get into trouble even more often that Keith nowadays! Is this your rivalry thing?”), Pidge’s fiery affection (“Don’t ever do that again!”), Allura’s bittersweet sympathy (“It’s so hard to lose half of yourself, Lance. But I know you are going to be alright in the end.”)

“Exactly,” Keith nodded as if he realized what Lance felt. Well, he probably felt it too. “The thing that connects dragons’ clusters… well, that’s how Pidge calls them, clusters… It’s like the connection that exists between Voltron’s lions and their paladins. When the dragons met me, they immediately realized that it was not only the moth infestation that helped me establish a telepathic connection with you, it was Black’s help too. So they knew that their solution is most likely to work for us too.”

“So, Red is helping too?” Lance couldn’t really wrap his mind around the idea. He was so sure Red would be mad at him...

“And Blue. And Black, and Green, and Yellow too. All of them. All of us… we love you, Lance.”

Lance felt how hard it was for Keith to say so. Frankly, he was not sure if Keith really stressed the word “love” or Lance just heard something he wanted to hear.

“Please, try opening to them,” Keith coaxed him gently. “The dragons’ leader said that’s the necessary condition. That we not only need to establish contact with you, but you also need to establish contact with us.”

Lance shrank into himself. “I’m afraid.”

“I know,” Keith replied. “I am too.”

“What can you possibly be afraid of?”

“That you wouldn’t want to come back to us. Or that you’d want to go back… to them.”

For a second Lance felt strongly tempted to return to the planet for real — deep into the sweet oblivion.

But Keith was by his side, and Lance had already gave him too much pain.

“I’ll try…” he murmured.

And opened his mind like he used to.

***

The red lion bounced on him as a big cat, making Lance fall onto a star-peppered plane.

“Stop! Stop!” Despite himself Lance laughed: the feline tongue was covered with short hairs that tickled mercilessly. “Uncle! I yield!” 

But Red didn’t seem to be inclined to give up: he pressed on Lance’s chest and arrogantly raised his head, going for a sphinx look, as if saying with his whole demeanour “that’s my prey and I’m not letting it go”.

“Seriously, let me breathe!” Lance begged. “You’re heavy!”

Red didn’t even flinch.

Suddenly Lance heard low and dangerous growling nearby.

He turned his head.

The other lions were sitting in a loose circle around them.

They didn’t look mechanical anymore, no more than Red did. But they didn’t look like Earth animals either. None of them had manes, and their tails resembled a leopard’s, without the tassels. But their presence felt vaguely royal, reminding Lance of Aslan from Narnia. They didn’t look like the real beasts, they looked like the living metaphors of the rulers of the animal kingdom.

The black lion, incredibly huge, glorious and gleaming with silver in the cosmic night, came up to them and carefully touched Lance’s hand with his wet nose. Red reluctantly jumped off Lance, snorting. 

Blue, looking like a star nebula, came up to them too and licked Lance’s cheek. Green gingerly touched Lance with her paw, as a cat who is checking if the mouse is still alive, but she didn’t scratch him, didn’t hurt him in any way. And Yellow leaned his majestic head down, bucking Lance’s chest.

Lance automatically hugged his neck, and Yellow pulled him, as if helping him to stand up. 

Well, not as if — that’s what he was doing, he was apparently fed up with Lance laying around.

A little overwhelmed, Lance pulled himself up, trying to gather his feet below himself — and found out he was holding Hunk’s hand, big as a shovel. His best friend seemed to become even bigger when Lance was away.

“Nah, it just seems so,” Hunk informed him. “It was less than half a year for me and more than three years for you. So it’s you who actually shot up.”

Pidge almost flew into his arms, hugged him desperately, hiding her face on his chest. “You idiot!” she sobbed. “I’m not blaming you for anything! I’m happy that you are you!”

“Lance…” Allura put her hand on Lance’s shoulder. Her eyes were softly gleaming, like a nebula.

“Wait a second,” this warm welcome brought Lance on the verge of tears, but there was something he needed to clarify. “So now you need to sleep all the time so that I could stay awake? That’s worse than prison!”

Pidge mumbled something unintelligible. 

“No-no-no!” Hunk waved his hand, dismissing the thought. “That’s just training wheels, to start you over.”

Lance gulped. “What if I never outgrow these… training wheels?”

He felt permanently changed. Broken.

“We are ready for this too,” Allura sounded very assured and determined. “We know the trauma can be permanent. If that’s the case, some of us will always be in telepathic contact with you. I think, in time it will be enough for just one of us at any given time to keep in touch, so to say. I also think,” she smiled, “that there is a person who will be willing to take up most of these duties on himself.”

Keith was standing aside among the stars, smiling, not saying anything.

He was afraid Lance wouldn’t want to go back. He said he loved Lance, and Lance replied it was not enough. What an idiot, why couldn’t he have found better words, the words that Keith deserved? The fact that it was partially in a dream was no excuse in Lance’s book. There is no way you can react like that to a heartfelt confession!

Lance breathed in — and closed the distance between him and Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I know it has been ages, but the fate really conspired against this project! Crumbcake (without whom this thing wouldn't sound as "English" as it should and who is one of the best beta-readers I've ever encountered) has a lot on her plate, and I have 10 times as much! My life is a legitimate drama show right now.  
> But... we're still doing it, and the end is near!
> 
> Last but not least, the amazing Shugister drew an art for this story!  
>  [(full size)](https://sun9-15.userapi.com/c850416/v850416546/14993b/fuNMsgrI2eA.jpg)  
> Her tumblr is https://shugister.tumblr.com/, she speaks English and accepts commission.


	18. Always connected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everybody! We're back!
> 
> I've been mightily sick for 2 months, but now I'm better and at last have energy and mental capacity to finish this project! Also, loveliest crumbcake at last has time on her hands to help me with betaing (without her this would be a much bumpier read!).
> 
> Hope you all had the best winter holidays, whichever you celebrate, and Happy New Year!

Since they first met, Allura never ceased to surprise and amaze Lance.

He was impressed by her at first sight. He would have never thought such a beautiful girl can exist not inside a virtual reality, not on a silver screen, painted over and improved by talented visual artists, but at his hand’s reach.

He was half sure he was delusional. Or that he died and went to heaven (everything that happened prior to their first meeting supported the first theory, but Lance was always an optimist.)

Now he was surprised by her yet again.

“I was sure Hunk was doing it in my place…”

Allura sent Lance such a warm smile, that if it had happened somewhere around the time they first met, Lance would swallow his own tongue, grow red as a tomato and blurt out a stupid, tired joke, loosing whatever shreds of dignity he could muster. 

“I asked Hunk to teach me,” said Allura. “He had a lot on his plate already. All the day to day repair was on him, he also cooked for everybody… To pile a Kaltenecker care on him would be extremely unfair! I have to admit, it was a little difficult and more than a little scary at first, but I got used to it eventually…”

Lance remembered how Allura and Coran almost fainted the first time he milked the cow in their presence.

“Well, now I’m back and I can get back to my farm duty as well. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

Lance almost said “it’s not that there is anything more useful that I can do”, but fortunately caught himself at the right moment. He didn’t fancy another lecture on his importance.

“Don’t worry, I already find this task quite meditative. Sometimes it even brings me catharsis,” Allura opened a hatch in the wall and took out two containers. She put one of them under Kaltenecker’s udder and sat on the other one.

Kaltenecker didn’t seem agitated. Apparently, she also got used to the princess. Besides, Allura approached her at the right side.

It was warm in Blue’s hull where Kaltnecker currently lived. Maybe even too warm: the smells of manure and hay were overpowering. The hay was generously piled everywhere around, most of it very unfamiliar to Lance. In the dry grayish-yellow heaps he saw small pink and blue flowers here and there, looking like stars. 

“The dried grass came from one of the planets we landed while searching for you,” Allura confirmed. “Pidge and Coran checked this vegetation, it is not poisonous to Kaltenecker.”

Allura put her hands on one of the nipples, and the first streams of milk spattered on the bottom of the container. 

“It’s weird she’s still with milk,” Lance petted Kaltenecker’s velvet scruff. She looked at him sideways with her big beautiful eye and huffed quietly. “It should’ve stopped by now.”

“So they don’t constantly produce this… milk?” Allura clarified.

“No, that’s normally for her calf… for her child. They nurture their young with this liquid.”

“No way, exactly like the galra!” Allura laughed. “So, she has a child, then?”

“She probably had one right before we bought her, but she should be out of milk since then. Even if we account for the lost three years, it’s still too long…” Lance rubbed his chin, feeling unsure. “Maybe she was stimulated somehow? On the big farms they give cows hormones to milk them, but again she should have worked through them by now…”

“Oh my stars, you think she may be ill?!” Allura cried out and her hands stopped. “Are we hurting her by milking so much?!”

“No-no-no!” Any kind of negative feelings in Allura’s voice always made Lance’s heart go into overdrive. “If she has milk, milking her can only do her good! I’m just surprised she still has it, that’s all… Maybe weird space food is to blame?”

“Maybe,” Allura agreed hesitantly.

Allura’s hands resumed their agile and careful ministrations. For a while the only sounds one could hear were the patter of milk and sometimes quiet slaps: following the eternal bovine habit, Kaltnecker was trying to kill flies with her tail. The fact that there were no flies around didn’t bother her.

“Poor Kaltenecker,” Allura murmured. “She was forcefully parted with her offspring...”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Lance said cheerfully. “Their brains aren’t very complicated. If a cow hasn’t seen her calf, she would never miss them. They don’t even realise they give birth. So on the farms they arrange it so a cow wouldn’t even see her calf.”

Allura’s hands paused for a bit. “How interesting,” she said in a faint voice.

Lance felt ashamed for shocking the princess, so he decided not to add that most of the calves were being slaughtered for their meat anyway.

“I’m amazed by your human ability to adjust,” Allura said quietly. “Maybe because your bodies can’t change as ours do, your mind changes so easily!”

“As a matter of fact, we’re pretty close-minded as a species…”

His own shame was a reflection of mankind’s shame as a whole. Lance thought of concentration and labor camps of the twentieth century, witch hunts, scientists’ massacres in China, native peoples genocide, the organ factories of the Third World War… All the things general Sanda talked about.

He brought all that devastation to a foreign planet because he couldn’t adjust. He gave them the harsh human reality Allura was recoiling from.

Through his current strong mental contact with Hunk and Pidge who were asleep he felt a wave of indignation. The nerds were ready to argue that he was not at fault, and that he shouldn’t be too fast to judge humanity, etc etc. From his weak link with Keith and Allura, who were awake, came a surge of compassion.

“You’re amazing,” Allura repeated firmly. “You, the Earthians, not only humans. Kaltenecker produces so much of this tasty liquid and doesn’t mind sharing it! Even, as you say, it’s good for her health!”

Lance chuckled. “Because humans bred them that way.”

“See, you’re born symbionts.”

Lance jumped.

Allura finished milking the cow and put a lid on the container to not lose a drop. Then she stood up and put her hands on his shoulders. “Nobody else would endure so long on this planet,” she said with conviction. “And… if you hadn’t made it, we’d all be devastated. We felt incomplete without you.”

Lance gulped. His mental connection with Allura didn’t leave anything to doubt. He knew for a fact Allura didn’t love him in any romantic way — even with the same kind of puppy adoration he was feeling for her not long ago, — but she looked at him as if she wanted to kiss him... 

Allura stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. Then she hugged him tight as if she was afraid to let go.

“You’ve been my rock for so long, Lance,” she whispered somewhere in the general area of his neck. “Please let me support you too.”

...If Lance was amazed by Allura when he saw her for the very first time, it was nothing compared to the wonder he felt later, when he found an eternal source of compassion and strength behind her pretty facade. He never thought it was possible for real people, only the characters in patriotic movies.

“By all means, please milk Kaltenecker as long as you want, I won’t fight you it,” he hugged her back, his hands trembling.

Of course she wasn’t talking about the cow, they both knew it.

But Lance felt that Allura relaxed at his joke. She was glad he was coming into himself, he could see it in her mind. And he relaxed too.

***

“So, I added this goo the bugs from that volcanic planet disgorge and...” Hunk cut himself off and looked at Lance suspiciously.

The Red paladin was still industriously eating the dark orange substance with violet specs.

“Sounds crazy,” he nodded for Hunk to continue. “What else is there? I like this interesting spicy aftertaste…”

“That’s probably the excretions of the snails from that planet’s satellite, it’s very nutritious, has a lot of protein and tastes great,” Hunk said, a little shocked.

They were talking in Yellow’s cargo hold while Hunk was preparing dinner for the whole team. They’ve made a stop on an Earth-like (well, relatively) planet not long ago for a resupply, so they still had fresh produce. 

“It’s freaking good,” Lance licked his spoon. “You’re a magician, bro!”

He looked at his bowl as if thinking if it was worth licking it too, but seemingly decided against it and jumped down from the worktable he was sitting on. (Hunk fixed a veritable workshop inside Yellow’s hold.) Lance put the plate on the floor and whistled.

Suddenly Wolf appeared from thin air, barked and took the task of licking the bowl clean upon himself.

“Wow, did you train him to follow your whistle?” Hunk was honestly surprised.

“No, it was an accident,” Lance waved it away. “I’m used to doing that with our dog at home, so the first time I put the plate on the floor for him without thinking. Keith grumbled I shouldn’t give him leftovers, but they admitted that two or three pieces of snack wouldn’t harm this cosmic wonder born in the timeless abyss. Am I right or am I right?”

Hunk mechanically nodded. Wolf finished the bowl and looked at Hunk with pleading eyes. “No,” Hunk said sternly. “Don’t even ask, I won’t give you anything.”

Wolf kept looking at him.

Hunk took a piece of fruit prepared for frying (the plant the fruit came from was carnivorous so the fruit resembled meat) and threw it at Wolf.

He caught it flying, woofed in the way of thank you and disappeared.

“I’ll give it to him, he knows when to stop,” Hunk sighed again. Immediately, without turning his head, he slapped Lance’s hand which reached for another slice of fruit. “Don’t steal food! Wasn’t it enough that I gave you what’s left of the paste?”

Lance sulked. “Look, you just saved me from a three-year Robinson Crusoe adventure where trash was the only thing on the menu! Don’t I get some food privileges?”

“You do, but you’ve already exhausted all of them,” Hunk said. “Wolf has more sense than you do!”

Lance perched on the worktable once again. “Wolf is perfection, and I’m just a flawed human being.”

“Yeah, you are…” Hunk remembered what he was going to ask before Wolf distracted him. What’s with Lance’s sudden lack of disgust? “What exactly were you eating down there?” He said, and immediately added, “You don’t need to tell me if it’s hard to think about!” 

“No, not hard, not really,” Lance shrugged. “I mean, it is hard, but not as in painful, just not easy. As if it was in a dream, or happened long ago…” he bit his lip. “Well, not like that. Like as if you’ve been thinking hard on something else, like calculating an orbit for landing on Encelad during the parade of Jupiter’s satellites, and somebody asks you out of the blue what color underwear Iverson was spotted wearing on his balcony recently!”

Hunk snorted. “Yeah, that’s hard.”

“That’s the same kind of hard,” Lance scratched his head. “Of course, nobody wanted me to starve… I mean, I definitely didn’t want to starve… well, you know how it was. The moths mostly eat local fruit or drink their juices, or carrion sometimes. Carrion is very rare there, everything just sinks into the swamp. They don’t even drink blood. The fruits are like uncooked potatoes. It’s disgusting but you can chew it if you really try. It was weird for them that my body found it revolting. They didn’t have a notion of taste… Well, later I taught myself how to ignore these sensations. Or possibly just switched off my taste buds, I don’t really know. But I didn’t exactly thrive on that diet.”

Hunk sighed with understanding. Of course, raw fruit diet without any kind of heat treatment was not healthy, even dangerous.

“Anyhow, it was one thing that it all just went through the other end without stopping, and I almost got dehydrated because of it, I started to quickly lose my strength… So I… we… realized I needed to eat animals. But which ones? Even like I was, I refused to eat dragons because they were sentient. But beside them there are not many big enough life forms living there. There are some, but most of the local fauna don’t have enough meat for a good bite.”

“So you became a tracker?”

“No, not really. Moth can fly everywhere, so I always know what is hiding where. But mostly, to save time and effort, I ate moths themselves.”

Hunk shivered. He felt ready to throw up. He tried to suppress the nausea to the best of his ability, but he realized Lance had felt it anyway.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Lance added nonchalantly. “It’s not like I was forced to eat my own leg on a deserted island! It was a kind of norm for moth. It was like a two-stage feeding plan: one part of me produced the materials I couldn’t eat into the nutrients. Like symbiotic bacteria in our bodies.”

Hunk remembered how moths were crawling out of Lance’s mouth and ears, and he had to suppress a shudder.

Then he remembered another detail. “Listen, when we found you, you were clean-shaven… and your hair was cut. That was the moths’ work too?”

Lance smiled and rubbed his prickly chin (they didn’t shave every day trying to save shaving cream.)

“Yeah, it was them. Why waste biomass, right? They ate the hair I didn’t need. On my whole body, by the way. Before I got the hang of it, I once had to spend several days without eyebrows. It was really uncomfortable, sweat was messing with my eyes all the time. Then I got better at barbering.”

Again Lance was talking about moths as if they were the same as him.

Hunk couldn’t stand it anymore: he put aside his knife and the herbs he was mincing, came up to Lance and bearhugged him.

***

Pidge decided her current enemy was more dangerous than Zarkon. The latter was defeated after all. This one seemed to be immune to each and every trick. No matter how many times they tried, everything was in vain.

“Quiznack!” The screen was once again consumed by pixelated flames. Pidge growled and almost threw the controls against the wall.

She would’ve absolutely done so if they were on Earth. Even if they were on Olkarion or another advanced planet. But here, in deep space, devil knows how many lightyears away from any known inhabited star system (well, Pidge knew exactly how far away they were, she was just currently too lazy to rake her mind in search of exact figures) the gamepad was irreplaceable. Had she broken it, she would have nothing to do, except stargazing through Green’s eyeholes.

And participating in Keith’s group training exercises which he devised relentlessly and with a level of sadism greater than even Allura’s and Coran’s back when they weren’t very well versed in human physiology.

“We need a strategy,” Lance mumbled. He was sitting beside her, worrying his tiny beard. It was practically non-existent and didn’t suit him one bit.

“Pot, kettle,” Pidge replied darkly. “You were the first to die.”

“That’s why I say we need a strategy,” Lance sighed. “Look, what if I go from the upper gallery while you attack from the lower one?”

“We tried that three attempts ago,” Pidge said. “Did you forget already?”

She almost added “you have the memory of a goldfish”, but bit her tongue. There was a chance Lance would laugh at the joke, and there was a chance he would laugh but then quickly end the conversation under some pretext, then he would whistle for Wolf and teleport back to Red. Which was currently carried by Black, to give Lance and Pidge an opportunity to play games together.

“What if we place a bomb down there too?”

“We tried that with Hunk yesterday.”

“What if we sacrifice someone to the dragon?”

“What do you mean?” Pidge looked at Lance sideways.

“Do you remember the noble maidens which you can take into your party if you save them and give them jewelry?”

“But they are useless. Only low-level monsters react to them, and this one is a boss.”

“Yeah, but it’s a dragon. A dragon and a maiden. A maiden and a dragon. Do you get me?” Lance emphatically wiggled his brows.

“Well… very sexist, but it’s an older game, so…” Pidge looked at the screen with disgust. “Do you realize we’ll have to use a save that’s three levels earlier? There were no more maidens after that one.”

“Do you have better things to do?”

Pidge looked at the unchanging stars in the windows. “Keith will sulk again that if Black carries Red for too long, he loses a lot of quintessence.”

“I’ll smooth Keith over,” Lance wiggled his brows again. “Maybe literally.”

“Pfff,” Pidge loaded an early save. Waiting for the game to start, she subconsciously started to drum on the gamepad with her fingers. “Empty words, you haven’t even fucked once. And he usually picks at you with more prejudice than the rest of us.”

“Sad, but true,” Lance sighed.

He was seemingly not in the least surprised that Pidge knew even the most intimate details of his love life. It’s hard not to know them if you are constantly in a telepathic contact of varying degrees of separation. Most of the time they heard only echoes of each other’s emotions, but it was enough. Pidge was sure she couldn’t have missed a full-blown sexual encounter, especially since their telepathic connection was metaphorically sparkling even when those two so much as hugged or kissed.

“By the way, what’s stopping you?” Pidge asked.

“Why are you so interested in our sex life?”

The game loaded at last and their characters ran side by side along a monotonous black corridor, lit by evenly spaced torches. Lance’s character jumped and pulled down a curtain, opening a secret passage going down to the dungeons.

“Because you two are my main entertainment. Besides, I’m a genius-level intelligence teen, I’m bound to be either asexual or a pervert. I’m not ace. Any more questions?”

“Na-ah,” Lance answered distractedly. “Do you remember where the guard is hiding?”

“Behind that amfora. Don’t waste a spell on him, an arrow is enough.”

“Don’t teach your elders…”

It took them about two doboshes to deal with the guard, to find the key and to save the princess. Going through the same level at the empteeth time was boring, so Pidge resumed the conversation.

“No, seriously, what’s stopping you? Is there really no lube in space? Or is it condoms? Do you know that the medpod kills all germs, so we should all be free of STIs, unless Keith encountered something while with the Blades…” 

“You’re a rude and lowly person, Pidge. Our feelings are deep and pure.” Lance answered with an air of offended dignity.

“So it’s the lube,” she concluded. “You know, Hunk has this paste recipe…”

“Won’t do. There are bits in there, they’d grate. It also dries too fast.”

“You could water it down…”

“OK, I have the damn lube!” Lance snapped, and his character very emotionally smashed several barrels, snatching coins and even several jewels. “If you must know, I haven’t even finished the jar I bought in the first space mall! It’s still in Red, together with my other stuff!”

Pidge made a sympathetic sound. She had no idea how much lube a healthy young male would use during masturbation, but suspected that less than a jar in almost a year and a half was kind of sad. But she wasn’t surprised. Sometimes they didn’t have enough time to eat with all that fighting, let alone anything else.

“What’s the matter then?”

In her peripheral, Pidge saw not Lance himself but a controller in his hands, his agile brown fingers expertly playing with the buttons. Now those hands suddenly stilled.

“Pidge… Haven’t you noticed he is repulsed by me?”

“What?!” Pidge turned to Lance with her whole body. “What are you… Lance, are you completely bonkers? He is head over heels for you! And about sexual desire… well, we all know how he feels!”

Lance shook his head and hit pause. “No, you don’t understand. It’s very hard to hide something when you are always connected. And I felt it. Every time he touches me there is this… hesitation, I think? That’s only natural. I get it. If I, I mean the way I was before, if I had seen bugs pouring out of somebody’s mouth, even if it was the prettiest babe in the universe…” He sighed. “No, not even that. Do you remember how I was? Crying, snotting, hysterical all the time… a brainless slug. You can pity a slug, I suppose. Maybe you can even want it, if it’s well shaped. But can you love it?”

Pidge snorted and put her controller aside. “First of all,” she said, “Sea was right saying that the human brain is too complicated for our own good. We basically live in each other’s heads, but still don’t realize many things. Do you remember how we recently missed Hunk’s panic attack? Because he was thinking about food at the time! And we all thought it was alright if Hunk was thinking about food, right?”

Lance nodded hesitantly.

“Second of all,” she continued, adjusting her glasses, “we never pitied you. I know you feel ashamed right now and all that, but you shouldn’t be, really. You survived three years in that hell! Anyone else would break apart, and we would have nothing to save!”

Lance looked aside. “Someone already told me that.”

“So believe what you’re told.”

“I believe, it’s just…”

“No, you don’t,” Pidge lightly hit him with her fist. “You have an inferiority complex the size of Jupiter. And if you think we noticed it only after the mental connection, you’re deeply wrong.”

Lance smiled crookedly.

“Keith isn’t repulsed by you in the slightest. He might be afraid, though.”

“How is that better?”

“He is not afraid of you, you moron, he is afraid for you! He is afraid something will go wrong… Or maybe he is shy because we’re eavesdropping.”

“You’re joking, right?” Lance laughed. “What’s there to be shy about?”

Pidge was perplexed for a second: is he joking or does he really not understand? She quickly reminded herself that Lance spent three years in mental symbiosis. Three years. The human brain is not equipped to deal with it, she didn’t stretch the truth telling Lance he had nothing to be ashamed of.

“He could be shy because of us,” she reminded softly.

“We know every time one of us is going to the bathroom! And it’s all OK.”

“That was actually the most difficult part to get used to.”

Judging by the confusion in Lance’s eyes, it wasn’t the most difficult part for Lance. In fact, Pidge realized from the echo of his inner turmoil, he barely noticed this part at all! Living with the moth really skewed his personal boundaries. Or maybe they were different even earlier, after all, he was from a big family living in a not so big house...

“Besides, you don’t even know… You’ve had sex already, right?” it was a genuine question: Pidge didn’t really know if Lance had sex before. They couldn’t read memories through their mental connection, if it wasn’t something a person thought right at the moment and the connection was really deep.

“Yes, I even did it with Keith once…” Lance stopped suddenly, wide eyed and seemingly surprised with his own words.

“What do you mean, with Keith?!” Pidge asked. “When did you find the time?!”

“In my dream, when I was... “ Lance got deep red. “Crap, that part of me was really awful! I mean, I’ve just remembered that! Quiznack, I need to apologize!”

He jumped up from his makeshift seat near Pidge’s chair.

“Wait a minute!” Pidge caught his elbow. “First you help me fight the dragon, then you’ll go propositioning or whatever!”

“Pidge!” Lance moaned, and at that moment he looked so much like his former self, despite his stupid little beard and new small scars on his face, that Pidge started to laugh.

“That’s cruel and unusual punishment!” Lance complained, sitting back down on an upturned container. “Maybe you’re forcing me away from the best date of all times!”

“Which you have a chance to experience only because of me,” Pidge said mercilessly and gave Lance his gamepad. “So, work for your therapy session.”

“This so called session was five doboshes long,” Lance grumbled, obediently unpausing the game.

“And that’s the only reason why you’re off so cheap.”

Lance’s idea about a princess didn’t work and they couldn’t beat the dragon, despite having made three more attempts. Pidge decided there was a silver lining. What was she going to do with the rest of the time if she had defeated the final boss right now?

***

Shiro was admiring the outer layer of strange white patina under his feet.

He had no idea if it was mold or lichen, but it looked beautiful. Circles inside the circles, big and small, connected by thin bridges, were glittering like fresh frost in the Lions’ floodlights.

Shiro thought that soon they, and the lions, will be gone, and there will be no light on Doomgloom at all for a very long time. Maybe until the locals started trade relationships or other contacts with the planets of Voltron Coalition. Maybe even after that, if all that trade will be concentrated, say, on a small orbital station.

Perhaps it was a good thing, too. Light on Doomgloom felt like a strange, artificial thing: the darkness closely followed the uneven yellow spot, trying to breach the perimeter and hiding its tendrils. It was just a pity nobody would see the subtle beauty of this wondrous place.

“Huh, looks kind of pretty,” Lance muttered, staying side by side with Shiro. “Though it seems cold.”

“That’s just in your mind,” Pidge said. “Our suits are heated alright.”

“I know, I know…” Lance shuddered.

Shiro wasn’t cold. He got used to not paying any attention to whatever kind of environment it was outside of the battle suit. On the other hand, Lance had spent the last three years on a stifling hot and suffocating planet. He probably felt ill at ease among those bare rocks and pseudo frosting on the ground.

Besides, Shiro didn’t like that when he tried to tell Lance how proud he was of him, Lance turned that into a joke. A worrying symptom.

A moving platform, very similar to what Sea used but much larger and without an obvious force field, creeped into the circle of light and stopped. It was full of caterpillars, three of them to be precise. Quite a delegation.

One of the caterpillars crawled down on the ground, very quick and graceful. It was no surprise to Shiro, he already knew that their clumsiness and slowness were deceptive. 

The caterpillar came up to the small group of paladins — and first of all to Keith, who was standing in front of them escorting Sea. She was not tied or incapacitated in any other way, but Shiro was sure Keith would be able to restrain her if she tried anything.

A holoscreen appeared above the head of the caterpillar, showing twinkling text: ‘We thank the paladins for their help! The nightmares have ceased. We are glad you were able to return your friend and give our sincerest apologies for what Sea has done. Our government had never authorized her actions.’

“Do you know that already?” Keith asked.

‘But of course. We established telepathic connection with Sea right after you moved into our orbit.’

“You are not Warm Touch, are you?” asked Hunk for some reason.

‘Warm Touch resigned after the Nightmare Crisis. My name is Kind Feeling’.

“Nice to meet you… probably,” Hunk said with suspicious tone.

“How are you going to punish Sea?” Keith demanded.

‘Our court will decide.’

“May I speak in her defence?” asked Lance suddenly.

If the caterpillar had eyes, it would probably stare at Lance. But since it couldn’t, it just raised and lowered its head. Shiro got the impression it was a gesture of surprise.

‘Aren’t you the Red Paladin she wanted to kill?’

“I am.”

‘And you want to lighten her sentence?’

“Yes,” Lance’s voice trembled, but he seemingly took hold of his emotions. “She was… I think she had the right estimation. If I was who I was three years ago and saw that guy I became, I might have asked to kill me myself. And I wouldn’t be able to believe you can cure something like this. If not for my friends, I’d never be able to pull that off. But Sea didn’t know my friends. She couldn’t know they would find a way.”

Shiro thought he needed to make Lance understand how proud he was of him, really. And if the guy starts joking and trying to wiggle out of honest praise again, he’d have to tie him to a chair and gag him to make him listen. Keith would most likely be glad to help with tying him up.

Shiro chuckled at his own inner joke (which he wasn’t going to share with the younger paladins no matter how tempting it was) and almost missed the answer of Kind Feeling.

‘Thank you. We will take your opinion into account.’

Kind Feeling made some kind of a gesture with its — his? hers? — tiny hands, and Sea, who hadn’t uttered a word and looked absolutely defeated, was encased in the sphere of a force field. Kind Feeling started crawling back to its platform, the sphere with Sea following him as if on a leash.

“It looks like this is it,” Shiro muttered. “Not a whole lot of formalities.”

“It’s better than some alternatives,” Coran sighed nostalgically behind Shiro’s left shoulder. “One of King Alfor’s allies liked to give grateful speeches three days long! His majesty was always threatening that one day he’ll start a war with him just so that he didn’t have to listen to him anymore.”

Shiro smirked. Then something clicked in his earpiece: Coran switched over to a private channel. “I’m very glad for young Lance,” he said in quite a different tone of voice. “He changed but stayed true to himself.”

“It couldn’t be any different,” Shiro said firmly, although he was not actually that sure. “I think… maybe it’s good we have another year till Earth. He’ll have time to heal.”

“Which is of utmost importance considering we don’t know what is waiting for us on your planet,” Coran agreed.

Shiro could only nod.


	19. To be found by you

When Keith was about thirteen, he and Shiro went hiking for three days in the desert. The first night Keith dreamt about his father, reaching for him with raw hands where skin had burned away to their ligaments. Keith woke up, choking with sobs, trying desperately to keep silent, so that Shiro who was sleeping at an arm’s length wouldn’t hear it.

Shiro, of course, heard everything. He opened his sleeping bag, hugged Keith and stroked his back until Keith calmed down and fell asleep again.

That was the only time Keith slept with someone else that he consciously remembered. Well, not counting the survival training they had at the Garrison, which lasted three or four days, and he had to share a very small tent with six other boys.

From his limited experience Keith got the impression that it was not very comfortable to sleep too close to another person. Your neck sweats too much, you're cramped so close that one awkward move could give your neighbor a black eye. Besides, many people snore. Even Shiro snored lightly when he slept on his stomach.

Lance didn’t snore and hardly moved at all. He was capable of stretching on his back, hands above the blanket, and sleeping soundly through the night without a single disturbance. Keith felt it was unnatural, it even worried him a little. But in all other aspects he enjoyed lying beside Lance and listening for his quiet breathing.

He also enjoyed waking Lance up in the morning. Like now, for example. He really wanted to stir him up, to bite lightly the smooth skin on his neck, until his eyelashes start to tremble, then to kiss their shadow on his cheek, counting the barely noticeable freckles with his lips.

“Mmm, Keith…” Lance murmured, still asleep.

“I’ve been Keith for twenty two years,” he said, nibbling at Lance’s ear. “Say something new.”

Lance giggled, turned around — suddenly wide awake — and quickly straddled Keith, smiling broadly. “I see, someone feels adventurous today.”

“You could say that…”

Keith wanted badly to stroke up Lance’s muscular shoulders, to bundle up his pajama shirt — it was still the same blue shirt, but after so many years it was no longer hanging on Lance’s lithe frame, but hugging it tightly — to pet, to caress every dip and crevice, to remind his hands about the feeling of that warm smoothness, a bit wet after sleep skin.

Keith didn’t try to stop himself. He could afford it, after all. Lance wouldn’t mind, would he?

Judging from how readily Lance leaned down and kissed Keith in answer to his touches, he was indeed not going to complain.

Kissing Lance was also something else, a deceptively simple action, deserving an hour or two every time in itself. Once they did allocate that amount of time just for kissing. First Lance’s lips and tongue were cooler than Keith’s, but soon warmed up, then got even hotter. It was like drinking water, but that water didn’t quench the thirst, only heightened it.

Wait a minute, wasn’t it some kind of cheesy classical quote, from Literature Class? About kissing and water. Wasn’t it Shakespeare? Well, Keith, you reached a new low!

But Keith didn’t care if it was Shakespeare or not, he didn’t care about anything else at all. If he could, he would write Lance a sonnet. Would draw his portrait, even. Anything Lance could possibly want, only for him to never stop what he was doing.

But Lance stopped. He suddenly broke the kiss and sat up, still straddling Keith.

Keith seemed to make an undignified sound, because Lance winked and took off his pajama top. The sight was almost worth the loss of contact; Lance’s abs were moving beautifully beneath his tanned skin. Keith put his palms on Lance’s stomach, spread his fingers as wide as he could, to cover more ground. He felt both warm and soft smoothness, and the steel ropes of muscles below.

Well, at first. Quickly, the feeling changed. Instead Keith sensed strange movement under Lance’s skin, as if he was trembling, only not.

Keith raised his eyes at Lance’s smiling face. “What’s up, samurai?” He teased. “Where did we stop?” And he tried to duck down to Keith’s neck again.

Keith held him off, he did know why. A very bad feeling, a sensation of wrongness was slowly rising inside of him. “Lance, what’s going on?”

“We were going to tackle a hard problem, weren’t we?” He smirked and moved his hips suggestively.

At another time Keith would either smirk in response, or roll his eyes — depending on the mood — but not now. Now Lance’s stomach under his hands continued to tremble, and Keith’s hands started to tremble too.

Except it wasn’t some ordinary shiver. Something was moving under Lance’s skin, and it was not muscles. It looked more like a ripple on the surface of the sea. And the skin itself suddenly felt slimy, cold to the touch.

“Keith…” Any traces of mirth left Lance’s face, his eyes opened wide in fear. “Keith, what’s happening? I’m scared!”

Keith grasped at him, intending to never let go, and with panic felt something wet under his fingertips. The skin was tearing at his nails, breaking apart. Something — multiple somethings — was crawling out...

Keith’s eyes snapped open on their own volition, his fingers clenched on the edge of the bedsheet. The cargo hold of the Black lion was dimly lit by green auxiliary lights. The air seemed stifling. Keith could hardly breathe: Wolf was lying on him, pressing him down with all of his sizeable body.

Keith slowly breathed in, breathed out. He felt the all encompassing burning desire, nay, need, to go and call Red, to make sure Lance was alright, that it was nothing more than a dream. But his body was heavy like a lead brick, and with every passing moment the terror of the nightmare was seeping away, leaving only awkwardness. It would be embarrassing to wake Lance up just because he had a bad dream, Lance had troubles with getting enough sleep as it was.

Also, Lance would definitely ask what it was that scared Keith in his dream so much, and he just couldn’t tell him.

Besides, he distantly felt Lance through their team bond. He couldn’t even tell if Lance was sleeping or awake, but, wherever he was, he wasn’t worried or scared.

Keith promised himself (again!) that he would ask Lance if he was ready to sleep together. Meaning just sleeping, of course. They confessed their love, didn’t they? They were also dating. It was normal to sleep in the same bed if you were dating, right? He will definitely ask next time they’d stay on a planet for a night or two. For sure.

Sleeping arrangements in space proved to be a difficult matter.

Lions didn’t mind flying straight ahead if their pilots were sleeping inside, that became clear a long time ago, when they sometimes had to spend several days patrolling far away from the Castleship. But as soon as a pilot left the lion to, say, play a game of cards with another pilot, the lion would stop speeding, which made him or her fall back. And even Black wasn’t powerful enough to carry another lion in his maw for a long time. So no sleeping together and even no overnight dates in space for Keith.

They could rest on the planets more often, sure, but the paladins were spurred by the news of many disjointed galra forces, wreaking havoc across the universe. Keith as a leader was against extra pit stops, and the others supported him wholeheartedly.

He was also against everyone sleeping all at once; somebody needed to keep watch. Keith even wanted to introduce a sleeping schedule so that everybody would be awake at different hours during a standard 24 hour cycle, but Shiro talked him out of it, saying it was bad for morale.

If Keith remembered correctly, today Lance had the first watch, but he should be relieved by Pidge by now. Maybe he was still awake?

Keith sat up with a frustrated growl.

Wolf raised his head and sniffled curiously. Then he yawned and, having made sure nothing much was going on, lowered his head on his front paws again.

Not wasting time on getting his boots, Keith walked the icy floor to the cockpit. The door opened before he even touched it.

He tiredly dropped in his chair. “Call Red, please,” he asked softly. “But don’t be too persistent. Don’t wake Lance up if he is asleep…”

Lance’s face appeared on the screen almost instantly. He was half-lying in his chair with Pidge’s headset on, but he obviously hadn’t been sleeping. Keth sighed in relief mixed with exasperation: on the one hand, Lance was skipping bedtime again, on the other, he was alright and Keith could talk to him.

“Hi there.”

Lance jumped and almost fell from his chair. “Hey, mi capitano!” He cried out, taking off his headset. His eyes were tired, but his smile was bright and broad… just like in Keith’s dream. “Do you miss me already? Wejust got off talking.”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Is it your nightmare?” Lance asked sympathetically. “I hoped you would fall asleep again as soon as it was over.”

Keith belatedly remembered that their connection was a two way deal. Of course Lance felt his nightmare.

“Sorry, I couldn't.”

“You should be sorry for only one thing, that you’re not dreaming about me instead! I’m a much more pleasing subject.”

Keith winced.

Lance immediately stopped smiling. “Oh. Damn. You did see me.”

Keith kept silent. He really, really didn’t want to tell Lance about the details.

“Huh, well…” Lance bit his lower lip. “I guess, I’m sorry? As you can see, I’m alright and haven’t turned into a swarm of moth…”

Keith seemed to lose control of his face again, because Lance leaned forward and whistled. “Wow, that’s what you saw! You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m sorry,” Keith repeated.

“It’s me who should be sorry,” Lance sighed.

The awkward silence was threatening to drown them both. Keith opened his mouth to apologize again and suggest both of them go to bed, but Lance suddenly offered.

“You know what? How about Black taking Red into his mouth, and Wolf taking me to you?”

Keith’s eyes widened in surprise. Why hadn’t he thought about it?

“Or maybe you don’t want to see me now? I’ll understand…”

“No!” Keith even reached out with his hand, as if he wanted to drag Lance here through the screen. His fingers went through the hologram, making tiny ripples. “No, it’s a great idea! The best one! Wait a sec, I’m going to arrange that.”

***

Arranging everything just so took another quarter of an hour. When Keith and Lance at last dropped into the bunk in Black’s cargo hold, they were both expecting to be thrumming with nervous energy, but suddenly realized they were dead tired. They barely had enough strength to take off their space suits and get under Keith’s thin blanket. They didn’t even have energy to feel awkward or bashful over their first sleep together in only their underwear.

To be exact, Keith remembered that he was supposed to be shy after they both got comfortable in each other’s arms.

But his breath still hitched when he realized that’s the first time he touched Lance’s naked shoulders in reality, not in a dream.

“Don’t you dare…” Lance murmured, clenching his back with his nails and tugging him closer.

“Don’t dare what?”

“...Or I will really start thinking you are disgusted by me.”

What the...

Keith gulped, feeling momentarily cold. His hand raked through Lance’s brown locks.

“Did I guess right?” Lance nuzzled closer into Keith’s clavicle as if he was afraid Keith would say yes and that would be the last time they would be in each other’s arms like that.

“No,” Keith felt a strong wave of regret that Wolf was not there with them. It would be high time for him to pile up on them and distract from this conversation. But the traitor is in Blue, visiting Kaltenecker, and is rolling around in the hay while mice comb his fur.

“I dreamt…” he said very softly. “That we were doing… you know what. And then the moths started crawling out of your skin.”

“Well, I’m glad it was not out of my ass.”

Keith moaned. “Fuck, thank you for that mental image.”

“So are you not… revolted?” 

“I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t want to get rid of them. We tried to get you too, but it didn’t help. And you… I know that you need time, but even now you sometimes close yourself off. As if you are not with us, but somewhere far away.”

Lance distanced himself at precisely the amount of space required to look Keith in the eye, which was a little up due to their position. Keith’s heart almost stopped out of tenderness. He never saw Lance like that… so soft, maybe?

“You know,” Lance started slowly, while his thumb was stroking the skin on Keith’s neck, near the carotid, back and forth, back and forth. “When the hive was in my head, I felt calm. Like I had peace with myself at last. Do you know how the Garrison encouraged us to get rid of inner dialogue? It was like that. I wasn’t arguing with myself anymore, like I used to. I wasn’t constantly telling myself I was not as good as you so I needed to always work hard to be the best… Although, there were bad things too. Like, I was always angry at the dragons and was afraid for the hive. But I was still not alone. Never alone. I was warm inside.”

“And now you’re not?” Keith whispered, because he couldn’t find his voice.

Lance smiled secretively, almost dreamily. “Now I have all of you in my head, and I’m also warm. You know, deep down inside I think I always wanted to be found. To be found by you, to be exact. I was dreaming about it.”

“Your version of me was wearing make-up,” Keith huffed.

Lance snorted. “Well, I apologize for remembering you prettier than you are! You know, mullet man, it would be good for you to take care of your looks because…”

Keith interrupted his speech with a kiss.

Each time he met Lance’s lips with own, it was like kissing him for the very first time yet it was comfortably familiar too. On one hand, they knew each other really well, especially now. On the other hand, they had so much left unsaid between them. And every time their mouths and tongues met, they expressed what was unspoken, and never wanted to stop.

“Quiznack, Lance,” he needed to pause, to breathe, but he couldn’t, not really, because every second his lips weren’t touching that warm and a little scored skin, it felt like a crime before the face of the universe. “I missed you… so much.”

“Will you show me how much?”

Lance’s hand travelled down from Keith’s chest to his waist under the blanket, hovering at the band of his underwear, as if Lance was waiting for permission.

Keith bit Lance’s ear, perhaps too harshly — or not — because Lance moaned, curving his back to get closer to Keith. Did Keith just think he was too tired for anything? Dirty lies and provocation.

“Please, just don’t be as rushed as you were in our shared dream,” Keith hugged Lance even closer. The resolve to never let him go was as prevalent in his head as war drums could be, and he didn’t care if the other paladins could hear that through the connection. “Or deja vu will spoil everything. You knew you had the worst timing, right?”

Lance sighed exasperatedly. “Look, I was asleep! Ask my subconscious! It probably really wanted to let you in too.”

“And I wanted to get in,” Keith said, looking at the shadows playing on Lance’s expressive face.

In that dream he had freckles. There was not a sign of them in reality. Right, there could be no freckles with him not being exposed to sunlight for god knows how long.

“Do you want to let me in now?”

“Really badly.”

Keith caressed Lance’s cheekbones with his thumbs, trying to express not only his desire, but also his tenderness.

Suddenly Lance winked at him. “If you want to go further than in the dream, I have lube.”

Keith almost choked on his own saliva. “Just like that?! Right now?!”

During their sex ed classes at school the instructors always underlined that anal sex necessitates a responsible aprroach, and one is better to tackle it with an experienced partner, or, alternatively, very carefully and gradually. But maybe Lance is an experienced partner?

“When else? Tomorrow some other giant space bug can fly up Black’s butt and try to kill us.”

Keith could only nod stupidly.

“Although I never actually tried anal…” Lance continued thoughtfully. “But I did watch gay porn while on Earth!”

His delight was too much — Keith laughed himself silly.

***

This time Hunk and Pidge went above and beyond.

The paladins and their friends had to plan each stop days ahead. Sometimes it took them about two days to argue whether they can afford to decelerate now and what planet to choose. Every deceleration and the subsequent need to gain speed again made the way to Earth much longer. 

But they couldn’t avoid pit stops at all: they needed to restore their stocks of organic matter (or at least carbohydrates) for the green goo synthesizer, they desperately needed some cardio… The morale was also better if they could spend some time together in the flesh, not just on holoscreens.

The paladins used to study at the Garrison Academy, where they were conditioned for the realities of spending months or even years in deep space. But even the longest missions were supposed to have a connection to Earth, and they also assumed that you were locked in a tin can of a spaceship not alone, but with your teammates.

If one lion took another into its mouth, their pilots could spend some time together briefly, but this method didn’t allow team-wide movie nights or “Killbot Phantasm” sessions.

Their telepathic connection helped — to a point. Allura’s prognosis turned out to be right: Lance really got used to making do without support of the rest of the paladins, although it was already evident he would always need some form of help. But now the others got almost addicted to it.

Live conversation became the main treasure. If in the beginning of their journey every paladin went out of their way to avoid r pets or passengers, later the additional crew members became the target of a silent but relentless struggle. Even Hunk — Hunk! — accused Pidge and Keith, of hoarding Shiro’s company, and bickered with Allura over Romelle and Coran. Somewhat understandable, since Hunk was tired and in a sore mood after the late night watch that was followed by helping Lance fix a minor break in Red. But still.

Once Hunk lost it, Lance put his foot down. “Do what you like, but I’m sure what we need is some good old fashioned R&R! And not on another prehistoric world where we land next to a volcano and track down primordial goop for organic ingredients while suffocating from lack of oxygen! Yes, I know that most of the planets are on this stage, but we need something normal, with a forest, a body of water and some clouds!”

“I thought you were in a hurry to get to Earth,” Pidge grumbled. She liked prehistoric worlds.

“I am,” Lance answered with dignity. “But I want to get there alive, without killing half of you in the process!”

“You won’t stand against any of us in close combat…” Pidge said, but through their telepathic connection they all felt her deep longing for the sky and the clouds.

Besides, it was still rare for Lance to take initiative in the team’s dealings, especially with such assertiveness. Keith knew that everybody wanted to support him.

Anyway, Pidge and Hunk outdid themselves.

The planet they found for a pit stop looked like Earth’s twin sister. Except that it wasn’t a “real” planet, but a satellite of a gas giant ten times as big as Jupiter. Well, most of the planets in the Universe are in fact gas giant’s satellites. In Keith’s book it didn’t make them worse, on the contrary, that meant they were more beautiful.

The big pink and green body of the gas giant was hanging in the sky all day long. While they arrived and set camp, several shadows of other satellites slid across this enormous heavenly lollypop like freckles, but the giant itself barely moved towards the horizon. “Incomplete tidal lock”, Pidge said. In the hemisphere they chose for landing the giant barely set, in the other one it almost never rose.

The lions landed in the mountain valley on the edge of the almost authentic pine forest. At least, these plants looked awfully like pines, only they were as tall as most of the paladins’ waists. Their needles had a red tinge and didn’t prickle, instead they flex, like horsepines.

“Ecosystem looks simple enough, as far as I can judge,” said Pidge, looking at her own scanner and Allura’s scanning device. “Several species of animals that eat grass and trees, and several species of animals that eat the herbivores. The biggest creatures is about the size of a toy-terrier. I can detect no life forms similar to insects.” 

“Hallelujah,” Hunk breathed out with evident relief. “So we don’t need our helmets here?”

“We don’t,” Pidge agreed. “Especially since that local fauna’s DNA is incompatible to ours. We are not edible to them, and they are not edible to us.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Hunk grumbled. “I doubt they got a memo. They can be poisonous, too.”

But he unclasped his helmet even as he spoke.

It was a huge relief to once again feel wind on your face. Here, on a nameless satellite, it somehow smelt like sea even among the mountains.

“It’s iodine,” Lance said, his helmet under his arm, squeezing his eyes and smiling happily. “I bet these red trees build up a lot of iodine.”

Something unclenched in Keith’s chest. It was a treat to see Lance like this.

First they needed to set the camp: to erect the particle barrier, to find firewood (freshly cut little pines didn’t do, they were too wet), analyze what of the local organic matter they could use in a synthesizer, get water to be filtered later… Recycling was good and all, but, as Lance put it, “nothing beats drinking water you haven’t pissed yet”.

Immediately after finishing with most of the tasks, Lance said he was going to scout around.

“Alone?” Keith asked indignantly. “Are you crazy?”

“But there are no large animals, as Pidge said. And I’ll always be connected.”

“If you think I’ll let you go anywhere alone on an unknown planet…” 

Keith cut himself off. He was afraid he sounded too controlling, as if he were the jealous boyfriend from a social ad about abusive relationships. But at the same time his heart ached, demanding that he never let Lance go, especially alone. Keith couldn’t take his words back.

Fortunately, Lance didn’t demand any such thing. “As you say, commander. Then let’s go together.”

For some reason Keith felt his cheeks turning pink. “We’ll be quick,” he said, not addressing anyone in particular.

Hunk heard him. “Take this with you!” He threw something at Keith, that he caught mechanically.

It was a small silver sphere, no larger than a tennis ball.

“It’s a portable field generator,” Hunk said proudly. “It’ll work as a shelter in a pinch. I and Pidge have just finished it by reverse-engineering Sea’s field. They have some very interesting technologies on Doomgloom!”

“Thank you, Hunk,” Keith said sincerely, although he didn’t plan to use an emergency shelter on a short walk. But you should never relax too much on an unknown planet. Who knows, maybe there are some flesh-eating worms that live underground and are ready to pounce on you when you least expect it.

Lance, on the other hand, beamed as if Hunk has just claimed to make radiocontact with Earth, no less. He hollered, jumped on Hunk and hung on him for almost half a minute. “Thank you, buddy! You’re the best!”

It was probably something to do with their special friendship.

The red pine forest appeared to be not so short as they thought. When they walked a couple hundred yards from the camp, the terrain started to lower. They knew about that because they saw the river looping and wiggling in the valley on the photos, but they didn’t expect the trees to grow up with the same rate the slope went down. With every step the trees around them became taller, only their canopy stayed on the same level, as if something cut their branches as soon as they reached a certain height. Soon Keith and Lance were walking through a real pine forest that smelled like sea.

The needles bent sunlight almost in the same way as water, so the flecks of light were playing on the thick carpet of needles under their feet as if on a bottom of a pool or a sea during calm weather.

Keith thought that he was rather tired of sea, sea-shaped dreams and sea metaphors. But Lance seemed happy as a clam (ha!), constantly looking around and breathing in everything around.

“Looks like the bottom of a lake, right?” he exclaimed. “Trees grow like seaweed! I wonder, is it some kind of natural phenomenon, or some giant bird flies here and eats them up?”

“We could do without a big bird,” Keith grumbled.

Lance beamed even more. “Where is your sense of wonder? You were hunting cryptids when you lived in the desert, admit it!”

“I was hunting for an ancient alien ship which turned out real enough,” Keith snorted. “Not for a Mothman or something like that…” He cut himself.

Lance didn’t get offended, though. On the contrary, he bent over himself laughing. He was sobbing, beating his own lap and grasping the nearest pine so as to not fall down. “Keith, oh my god, my sweet quiznack, do you realize that I’m the real mothman now? And you did catch me! Your career as a cryptid hunter was a success!”

“I’m going to kill you,” Keith promised him serenely, stepping closer.

Lance shouldn’t have reacted as fast as he did — he was still delirious with laughter — but he got serious at once and rushed down the slope, weaving his way between the trees.

“Stop!” Keith shouted and went into pursuit.

The red pine needles on the ground weren’t slippery, unlike the real Earthian pines, but cracked with a crunching sound, so loud, that it seemed as if a pack of bisons was stampeding through the forest. Keith thought it was really unsafe to run on an unknown planet, especially downhill, when they had no idea what to expect at the bottom. But as soon as he opened his mouth to call to Lance, he almost rammed into his broad back.

Lance was standing hugging a dangerously leaning down “pine tree” with one arm and looking down from the edge of a steep ravine, almost a canyon. Keith swore: their short run could very well have ended in tragedy, if one of them wouldn’t be able to stop in his tracks. The opposite shore of the ravine was covered with the same type of pine-like trees, so it was hard to notice its edge.

On the bottom of the canyon there was a narrow winding river, that seemed especially deep green-blue between the reddish brown shores. It smelled like freshness, and even up here you could hear a faint noise of rapids. Keith would have heard it before if not for Lance’s laugh, cracking of the forest floor and drumming of his own blood in his ears.

“You’re an idiot,” he said to Lance, meaning he shouldn’t have run — and froze in place, amazed at how blue his eyes were. On this whole planet there was nothing quite as blue as them.

“Yeah, I am,” Lance agreed, licking his lips.

Immediately, they were kissing, both holding onto the crooked little tree at the edge of the ravine, and the world was empty except for the two of them, their mixed breath and the hot persistence of their lips and tongues.

“We need… to step away from the edge,” Keith whispered, having forced himself to make a pause.

“You really became so responsible... “ Lance bit an edge of his ear. “What if I don’t want to?”

“Lance…” Keith started, but didn’t have time to finish with prepared “not funny”, because Lance took a ball of a compact force field out of his unresisting hand.

“Look at this.”

He forcefully pressed the ball to the tree trunk. It didn’t fall down, but stayed attached to the bark. Then it flashed briefly, and a rapidly growing semi-transparent film of a forcefield spread out from the tiny device at its center. It went through Keith and Lance seemingly with no effect, and in a second they were standing not just at the edge of a ravine, but inside a sphere, made of hexagons. It looked as something in between the field Sea used and the field that protected the Castle.

Before Keith was able to stop him, Lance stepped aside — to where the transparent concave surface of the forcefield was hanging above the empty air. The field was holding him.

“It allows air with current settings, so we won’t suffocate,” Lance grinned.

“Don’t you get your adrenaline fix during battles?” Keith raised his brow.

“That’s hardly a fix,” Lance shrugged. “The slope isn’t ninety degree or something, we would just roll down, well, maybe bump ourselves up a little. But look, what a view!”

Keith shook his head and joined Lance, sitting above the abyss with his legs criss-crossed.

The field felt completely steady. The river was gurgling right beneath them, with its rapids spitting white foam.

“Beautiful!” Lance sat beside him, beaming. “Now let’s pick up from where we stopped.”

“From the jokes about cryptids?”

“Well, if you want. Wait, I’ve just come up with a cool one! A half-galra and a mothman walk into a bar…”

Once again Keith was forced to use the only method, which was guaranteed to make Lance either shut down or change his topic.

It worked: after Keith bit Lance’s lower lip, holding his face with both hands, Lance whispered in Keith’s ear, “By the way, I grabbed some lube… Half a tube I have, to be precise, it will be enough for a couple of rounds. The others won’t look for us for some time, I warned Hunk.”

Once again, Keith felt the beginning of nervous laughter. “You’d be better off bringing a rope,” he said, shoving Lance down on the transparent surface. “And a gag!”

Lance’s eyes got big and round.

“Every time…” Keith murmured, biting Lance’s chin, cheek or ear after each word, “every time we’re close to having sex, you never fail to... ruin the mood!”

“We’re close?!” Lance asked indignantly. “You’re never the one to initiate…” He seemingly lost his thought, as his breath quickened and fingers clenched in Keith’s hair.

“Did you want something?”

“Nah, it’s nothing…” Keith was already unclasping Lance’s chestplate. “It’s only… If you really want to tie me up…”

Keith raised his eyes. “It was a joke.”

“I don’t mind.”

They stared at each other in utter disbelief. The light was shining through Lance’s hair as he was lying, and it was like a short halo floating in the air.

Of course, it was not going to be their “ultimate first time”. Keith had already had a chance to see for himself what deft fingers Lance had — unlike his mouth, which was not skillfull as one would think judging from how it was never shut. Lance had a tendency to get sidetracked and graze with his teeth on the wrong side of painful. On the contrary, Keith heard a lot of praise to his own oral talents from Lance.

But still, it was a milestone.

They both never tried anal play, and it seemed like an important step — as if showing the ultimate trust, as if it was something special that was bound to happen between the two of them. Besides, everybody and their dog said it was incredibly pleasant, didn’t they? To rock someone’s world, to black out from pleasure and all that...

(In all honesty, Keith couldn’t believe that his world could be rocked more sufficiently by Lance — or something they’d do together — than it had been already, but the space taught him to never say never.)

“OK,” Keith breathed out. “Since we don’t have any ropes, you’ll have to just do everything I say.”

“Aye-aye, commander,” Lance licked his lips once more.

Quiznack, this thing had always drove Keith crazy, and he couldn’t imagine it ever happening otherwise. The thing being not hearing “commander” from Lance, and not even him licking his lips. No. It was his trust.

***

It was completely unlike any dream they had, alone or together.

In a dream, when they were falling into each other, there was no place for doubts or awkwardness. But here and now, although his skin was burning with arousal and his heart was beating somewhere in his throat, the indignities of tangible word made it all inescapably, scaringly real.

In a dream his legs wouldn’t threaten to fall asleep — unlike this present moment, although the sensation was offset by the pleasant feeling of being held and controlled. In his dream he wouldn't be even remotely worried that he is on his hands and knees above a mountain river, protected only by the faint shimmer of a force field (oh my god, how did this crazy idea come into his head, and why did Keith go along with it?!). And he wouldn’t be at least a bit nervous about the fact that his best friend and lover was going to jam fingers into his ass — crap, what if Lance hadn’t cleaned himself well enough? He did his best, he checked everything, but still, the sanitary compartment on board his lion wasn’t the best place for...

“You’re thinking too much,” Keith bit his asscheek and trailed his tongue up his crack; Lance shuddered. Clearly, Keith didn’t have any problems with the cleanliness. “Quiznack, I wish I could really tie you up…” 

“How would that help with thinking?” asked Lance, strangely hot all over.

The idea of ropes fascinated him, but he couldn’t understand why. It was not a kink per se, and the rubbing sensation on his skin might not be as pleasant, but...

“This way I’d be holding you. Constantly,” Keith answered. “Your hands.”

“What..?”

“Push up a little and put your hands behind your back. Yeah, like that.”

The new pose was rather awkward to Lance, his cheeks reddened. If there was someone to watch them on an inhabited alien planet, Lance would be completely exposed. Well, they both were exposed anyway… Two naked humans in a transparent sphere, hanging above an abyss.

This could be a loaded metaphor of interpersonal relationship.

“I told you, you’re thinking too much,” Keith grasped his crossed wrists with his hand and pulled. “You promised you’d do what I say, but you’re not listening.”

Keith sounded calm, but through their telepathic connection Lance felt him strung out too. Lance tried to relax, leaned back — into the steady iron grip. Keith being so cool and controlling really did things to him. Wonderful, wonderful things.

As they were pressed together back to stomach now, his head lolled on Keith shoulder at its own volition.

Keith spread Lance’s asscheeks with his other hand. Any second now he was going to...

But his fingers didn’t slide in. Instead, Lance heard a loud slap and felt a brief mild pain, that left him tingling all over.

Lance was sure he’d like it harder, but it was probably tough for Keith to swing his arm in this position. Or maybe he was unsure of his reaction. Lance gasped anyway — a sharp intake of breath accompanying a brief jerk away.

“Is it okay?”

“Yes!”

Next hit was harder, just as Lance wanted.

Lance gulped and gnawed his lip on each harsh smack. It was so easy to just let himself be under the onslaught of sensations, to drown in them...

No, it didn’t feel anything like uniting with the hive. Lance could hardly tell anymore what it was like to be together with the moths — it was too out of normal human experience so that he could formulate something concrete now when he fully returned into his human psyche and sensoric limitations of just one body. But he did know that Keith’s commanding voice, his steady hands, the pleasurable sting — all of it somehow coalesced into the nostalgic, sharp feeling of being not alone. As if somehow his body reacted to the known stimuli.

Lance moaned, his back curving even more.

“Good boy,” Keith whispered in his ear. “Keep going.”

Some other time Lance might have snorted, but now the praise didn’t seem funny. Now it felt natural. Everything was as it should be.

This time, when Keith spread his asscheeks and slid his wet finger into Lance’s hole, it didn’t make Lance nervous in the least, didn’t make him tense either: it was Keith, and his fingers had the same right to be inside Lance’s body as his own fingers. They were one. Or not..? Anyway, they were incredibly close.

Lance shamelessly bore down and backwards, impaling himself on Keith’s fingers, his lips bit down to steady the tremble that threatened to consume him. A long time ago he read about anal sex — simply out of curiosity. People wrote that you had strange sensations, as if wanting to go to the bathroom. But any physical discomfort hardly mattered at this point. All that was left was the satisfaction of someone being inside his body with him, just the way he always wanted. As if his subconscious didn’t give a damn it was not happening telepathically, but in the very real reality, where it was hot, and smelled like sweat, lube, where it was all about Keith’s heavy breath and his quick heartbeat that Lance was feeling against his back.

“You’re not hard,” Keith panted, kissing his neck and shoulder.

Lance looked at his body with genuine surprise. It seemed to float somewhere far away from him. Indeed, he was sporting a half-chub, maximum.

“It’s supposed to be like that,” he said, although he didn’t remember exactly for sure.

“Yeah, like hell it is, “ Keith said skeptically. “When I jerk off, I’m always…”

Lance vaguely remembered that one didn’t need a full boner for a prostate orgasm, that it would even spoil the pleasure, but he didn’t have time to say anything on the matter, because Keith did something with his fingers — oh, he already had two in, when did that happen? cool! — and everything went white before his eyes, and the world narrowed down to this magnificent hot-button feeling, peeling him away from any kind of rational thought or even sense of self. He realized that he was moaning only because he recognized his own voice.

“Oh, wow,” whispered Keith in apparent awe.

And he repeated his action.

Quiznack. Fuck. Madre de dios. Nothing that had ever happened to Lance could measure up to this singular moment. No, he tried to stimulate his own prostate, for sure — simply out of curiosity! — and he seemed to find it, and it was very pleasurable. But it was never like that...

“Kei-ith…” Lance almost sobbed, pressing himself back into Keith for more, as if there was still any space between them. “Please, give it to me…”

“Hold on…” Keith whispered drunkenly, kissing and nibbling at his sweat-soaked skin. “I’m in charge, remember? Quiznack, the way you sound, I can feel how sweet you are with my fingers… I could do this for hours!” The last words sounded happy and surprised, as if Keith never suspected his own capacity to perform such a basic action as fingering someone for such a long span of time.

Lance began trembling. Keith’s response made the last core of doubts inside him melt, setting him free. Keith really wants to be with him, he really doesn’t find Lance’s body disgusting after all...

He gasped, because Keith bit him especially hard, drawing blood.

“I told you not to think!” he almost growled. “Back on your hands and knees!”

Lance leaned forward on his hands, anticipating. He didn’t have to wait long: he felt fingers dig in and his cheeks were shortly spread apart by rough thumbs. The thick nudging sensation at his slicked rim was no time to prepare for the insistent push inside that followed.

Despite all the prep the feeling was very new and unusual, that Lance had to freeze, biting his lips and trying not to wheeze.

“Are you OK?” Keith leaned to him, or rather plastered himself to his back, and intertwined the fingers of both their hands.

His hot breath made Lance shiver. Every inch of his body felt like it belonged to Keith. He looked at the red feathers of the not-quite-pinetrees around them and thought that it was the best day in his life.

“I’m wonderful,” he breathed out. “Just… please, don’t move yet, OK?”

“OK,” Keith agreed immediately. “Anything you want.”

And at this very moment the Lance that had been shoving himself against an iron cage, not being able to find a door; the one who felt cold, empty and lonely; the one who was wandering around in the fog crunching dragon bones under his feet… That Lance, found peace.

Just for several moments.

But even that, Lance decided, squeezing Keith’s fingers between his own, is a great result. For a start.

“OK, let’s do this,” he clenched his muscles just for the heck of it, and it was Keith’s turn to gasp. “Together.”

And they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fun bonus: jokes from my Russian beta Lindwurm. 
> 
> A half-galra and a mothman walk into a bar, talk with the barmen for short time and head out. The waiter asks the barman, “What these two clowns wanted?”
> 
> The barman says, “Ah, it’s nothing, they just ordered some sugar syrup and all the cash in the register.” 
> 
> ***
> 
> A half-galra and a mothman walk into a bar and say, “Two Cuba Libres, please, and lit a lamp for our friends, they’re coming soon.”
> 
> ***
> 
> A half-galra and a mothman walk into a bar, order two beers, but see there is a fly in one of the mugs. “What the fuck,” the half-galra complains to the waiter, “hurry up and change it!” “Wait a sec,” the mothman says to his companion, “they brought us a free snack!” The half-galra replies, “I hope you mean the waiter.”
> 
> ***
> 
> A half-galra and a mothman walk into a bar, but the barman already has his sawn-off gun out. “Get out of here, you dicks! Last time you got so wasted one of you was always muttering about his honor, and the other one demanded a plate of soup to fall down in there! In our fine establishment, we don’t have either!”


	20. Epilogue

“Have you ever ever wondered if we made the wrong career choice?” Hunk complained, dropping wearily onto the coach in the recreation room.

The paladin’s designated recreation room on Atlas was much smaller than the one they had used in the Castle, but — psst, don’t mention it to Allura — much cozier. It had pictures of Earth adorning the walls: the statue of Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro under reconstruction, almost entirely covered by a dense net of scaffolding; a beautiful canyon on the spot where one of Sendak’s line ships hit the ground; Star Heroes memorial where the main Garrison base used to be. One of the pictures was a group photo of all the paladins wearing safety helmets together with a mixed brigade of taujeerans and bi-boh-bee during reconstruction works in New York.

“Don’t even start,” Keith said evenly, not bothering to lift his head, now comfortably in Lance’s lap. “Do you still hope that Yellow will find some pretty girl to like more than you?”

“No, no!” Hunk threw his hands up in defeat. “I have realized the error of my youthful fantasies. Yellow is ridiculously monogamous. Unlike Black, I have to say.”

“Hey,” Keith weakly complained, feeling the need to defend his lion’s honor.

“Black is indeed a little… frivolous,” Allura noted.

She was as exhausted as the rest of them, or more, and was keeping a cold can of coke pressed to her forehead. The food industry was one of the first to be revived on the ruined Earth, and all the alteans unexpectedly liked the too-sweet drink to the point of deference.

Pidge, who was sitting on another coach opposite Keith and Lance, next to Hunk, giggled and mouthed a short word. Keith could venture a guess that it was “whore”.

“Yeah, all of us had a shot at being the black paladin at this point,” Hunk continued. “Even Lance.”

“Well, thank you, bestie,” Lance said testily, “your confidence is overwhelming!”

“...Which was really the peak of our careers,” Hunk finished. “It’s not even a lifetime employment with no promotion, what we have, it’s… I don’t know what to call it…”

“It’s an exploitation of minors,” Pidge supplied. “Child labour! At least, it started like that. Oh god, we were _child soldiers_ , and never got compensated for it.”

“Is this a mutiny?” Keith asked hopefully.

“It is,” Hunk agreed. “You can take that to Shiro, and Coran, too. No more parades. I had enough of them back when we whipped together the Coalition!”

“I’d never thought I’d say this,” Lance yawned, “but yeah, I agree. No more parades. We haven’t even held a decisive victory over the galra yet, what are they celebrating?”

“Fifteen decaphoebs since the beginning of the Resistance is a very important milestone,” Allura argued. “It has psychological significance…” 

“Five decaphoebs ago was more of a milestone, at least for races with ten fingers, but we never did anything special,” Hunk said.

“Five decaphoebs ago we couldn’t spare the resources…” Allura took the can off her forehead and winced. “Who am I trying to fool!” she muttered. “I’m as fed up with it as you! More so! Empty talks all day long with no real dialogue and no decisions!”

She jumped up from the couch and started to pace back and forth. Lance had to tuck his legs that he had stretched freely before, to avoid accidentally tripping her: she was obviously not looking where she was going. “This is just outrageous!” Allura was winding herself up more and more with each step. “Why is it that every time we’re trying to help someone, we have to overcome stupid beurocratic barriers! Why in half the cases we, the defenders of the Universe, are treated as… as something ornamental! Why, at last…”

A lightning-like sensation of joy suddenly pulsed through the connection between the paladins — a thin bond they hardly noticed anymore when everything was calm. The feeling was so bright and luminous that Allura cut herself off, and Keith minutely felt a hot lump choking him.

They all looked at Lance at once. The feeling was coming from him, that was clear to everybody present. Keith was still too lazy to get up, but when he raised his head awkwardly, he was rewarded with a view of Lance’s chin. He could tell even by the position of his adam’s apple that Lance was overcome with feelings, as if a proud father on his daughter’s wedding.

“It’s just... “ Lance said softly. “I had this feeling, it’s so good that _these_ are our problems! And that I’m alive and well, and we still sense each other as different personalities, and that the Earth is relatively OK, and that we were fast enough to save at least some of it, and…”

At this moment they heard a nervous clearing of a throat from the door.

Keith immediately sat up, trying to conceal his casualness. It’s not that he thought somebody didn’t know about his and Lance’s relationship — they didn’t wear their wedding rings aboard Atlas, but only because of the safety standards — but he hadn’t built his image of the impeccable Black Paladin, diligently cultivating subordination among sergeants and lieutenants some of who still remember him as a cadet, wet behind the ears, for them to see him just lounging around on the lap of his husband!

“Yes?” Allura asked, suddenly very tired and without any fire. “How can we help you, Joshua?”

Somehow she knew first names of everybody serving on Atlas.

“An urgent message through the interstellar link,” said Joshua, whom Keith knew only as Communication Sergeant Kerbel. “For Green and Red paladins.”

Everyone exchanged glances.

Personal messages through the interstellar link were not uncommon, although they were usually addressed to Allura or Hunk, who were dealing with the diplomatic side of their missions. Somewhat more seldom they were sent to Lance, who doubled as Keith’s PR agent. Keith received a missive to his name maybe once every couple of months, and Pidge could get something only from Olkarion or another crazy tech world where she had her fanbase. But a message to both Lance and Pidge at the same time? Highly unlikely.

“I know what it is!” Lance snapped his fingers. “That’s probably grateful R-heljanes! Do you remember, Pidge, we liberated them from pirates about three weeks ago?”

Tension leaked from Pidge’s frowning face. “Ah! Well, that’s OK then. Maybe, you’ll just talk to them alone?”

“Pidge,” Allura chided her wearily.

Pidge rolled her eyes. Allura could save her breath on her tired speech about the importance of communication with potential allies, Pidge probably knew it by heart at this point.

“OK, I’ll stay beside Lance, smile and wave my hand.”

“You’d better not smile, it’s a mortal offence for the R-helhanes,” Hunk advised. “They’ll forgive the Voltron paladins, but we don’t need extra tension.”

“The message didn’t come from R-krell,” sergeant Krebel clarified unexpectedly. “It came from the sector may-oks-4567, from the planet Hive.”

“What planet?” Lance asked.

“Hive,” Pidge’s face drained of color. “That’s from my logbooks, that’s the name I gave it.”

The psychic connection was still active after the recent spark, and at this moment everybody felt very acute understanding, fear, sadness — and, unexpectedly, longing.

“But how did they send a message?” Lance gulped. “They don’t have a technical civilization!”

“Yeah, and they couldn’t have built it in just ten years…” said Hunk, but he didn’t sound very confident.

“Could it be…” Pidge literally jumped down off the couch. “Huh, I’m a genius, but I didn’t really believe it would work! Let’s go, hurry up!”

***

The current C&C crew probably didn’t expect all five paladins barging in during their shift. Iverson, who was slowly sipping Coran’s “special energizing potion” (he was the only one who could stomach it), almost choked when they all crowded around the transmitter.

“What happened?” he asked grudgingly. “Did they find another Altean colony?”

“Almost,” Pidge said. “Kissinger, please, play for us the message from sector may-oks-4567.”

Kissinger, the communication officer on duty, pressed several buttons in her interface. A holoscreen unrolled in the air before the paladins’ eyes, accommodating itself to many watchers.

On screen, two dragons appeared.

Keith hadn't seen these creatures for ten years, but recognized them immediately. He still sometimes saw Lance on those bones-covered fields in his nightmares. Fortunately, it didn’t happen often, maybe once every couple of months. Or, maybe, it was Lance who saw these nightmares; it was sometimes hard to tell with them.

One of the dragons looked roughly the same as the one with whom Keith negotiated in the mental space created by the Black lion. The other one was much lighter in color and much smaller too, with its head wreathed by a swarm of buzzing moths. Keith didn’t expect to feel queasy just from looking at them. He reached with his hand — but Lance was the first to take his palm and squeeze it reassuringly.

Keith looked at his husband sideways. Lance’s eyes were shining with unshed tears. Keith shuddered, realizing it was the tears of nostalgia, almost joy. All this time Lance was worried the moths were destroyed! He was so worried he never once offered to go there and check. Not that they had time for it, or could help if they were indeed wiped out, but still...

“Greetings to Green Paladin Pidge and Red Paladin Lance on behalf of Antasi Confederation.” Dragons’ snouts were unmoving, but a violet stone hanging on the neck of the bigger dragon emitted short pulses of light paced according to the rhythm of his speech.

“Greetings on behalf of The Conference of the Hives,” this time a yellow stone on the neck of the other dragon lit up.

“Computer, pause replay,” said Pidge.

The image froze.

“Confederation, Conference — is this literal, word-for-word translation? And what the hell is antasi?”

Kissinger looked at her display, and her eyes bulged a little. “They’re speaking English!” The communication officer seemingly couldn’t believe it herself. “What you hear is exactly what they said!”

The Paladins exchanged glances. None of them was really surprised.

“Computer, resume play,” Pidge ordered.

The image unfroze, one of the dragons quickly folded and unfolded his wings, as if it was nervous.

“We’re glad to inform you,” the bigger one continued, “that for the past twelve planetary units of time that elapsed since your departure, our two races managed to reach a compromise and learn how to cooperate for mutual benefit, just as you wished for us.”

“The Conference,” the smaller dragon continued, “supplies the Confederation with raw materials and provisions in exchange for the temporary integration of volunteers that help the hives with the tasks we are physically not equipped to perform. We live in peace.”

“We managed to build the device for interstellar communication according to your instructions,” now it was the bigger dragon’s turn again. “But, according to the estimation of the united computing power of the Conference, we are not going to finish our planetary defences in time.”

“The full production cycle will take us upwards of fifty decaphoebs, according to the most optimistic forecasts,” the smaller dragon agreed. “That is why we ask you…”

“Please, avert the asteroid!” The last part they intoned in unison.

“We’re at your mercy, Pidge,” the small one added.

Pidge gulped.

Everybody looked at her.

“What asteroid?” Iverson asked suspiciously.

For the past ten years Keith was often extremely grateful that the connection between the paladins didn’t make it possible to read old memories, unless your contact wanted you to see them. Now he intensely regretted it.

Pidge winced. “There is no asteroid.”

“Pidge,” Lance reproached.

Pidge sighed, “Ok, ok! I sent them a message! Just when we were leaving, so that you wouldn’t notice. It had a voice part and a written part. It said that we changed the course of one of the asteroids in their star system, and it will make their planet go kaputt in twenty decaphoebs, if they don’t start playing nice and cooperate! It also had instructions on how to make an interstellar communicator.”

“Wait a sec, they didn’t have anything to receive a radio message with!” Hunk said indignantly. “They didn’t even understand oral speech, much less written one!”

“The dragons had these chest jewels, they received radio signals alright,” Pidge shrugged. “And the moths were fine with oral speech, and they could read too… at least to the extent Lance could. Which is not much, I concur.”

“Hey!” Lance yelled.

“Anyhow, I put a satellite in orbit with just enough power to transmit this message constantly for twenty decaphoebs. And then it would self-destroy, what am I, a savage, to leave space trash after me? And of course, I never changed the course of any asteroid, nothing is flying towards them. Unless there is an unrelated space rock on the rampage, which means they are just super unlucky.”

“Hm,” Hunk said in the pregnant silence that followed. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“I feel quite the same,” Allura agreed. “Either I should applaud your idea, or berate you for your bluff and use of blackmail not suited for a paladin!”

“Come on, it’s hardly blackmail!” Pidge waved her hand. “I had no way of knowing if they even got the message, and if they believed it, too! And I definitely didn’t think they’d manage it in time. I still can’t believe that they actually built a united civilization in ten years!”

Keith thought that he needed to have a closer look at this so called “united civilization”. Maybe the moths were secretly exploiting the dragons? Or vice versa? What’s with the volunteers the moths “integrated” — might it be a disguised slave trade?

But he decided not to spoil the moment with his doubts. Quite the opposite, he stood on tiptoes and whispered into Lance’s ear: “See? Your injection of humanity proved to be lucky for them.”

Lance nodded, wiping away his tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! :)
> 
> I started to post another translated work today — [The Pink Book of Joy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22333297), a post-canon klance fix-it. If you enjoyed "Moth" and Lance's horrible mind-controlled adventures... have another slice of Lance's horrible mind-controlled adventures with different flavour? :D And a side dish of space politics and terrorism.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you like it? Leave a kudo or a comment, they sustain me!


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